Remove Cenus.live Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Cenus.live pop-up alerts may appear out of the blue, covering the content of the site you went to or opening your browser when you do not need it to be opened.

Clicking the Cenus.live ad may cause the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of Cenus.live popups clearing in various methods, and also examining your personal computer for other malware presence.

GridinSoft Anti-Malware Review
It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!
Removing Cenus.live manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.
Gridinsoft Anti-Malware 6-day trial available.
EULA | Privacy Policy | 10% Off Coupon
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to be the first to know about news and our exclusive materials on information security.

What are Cenus.live pop-ups?

Cenus.live popups are an outcome of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a significant amount of income for adware suppliers. These promotions might consist of explicit material, or have a web link to harmful content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their solitary target is money.

Cenus.live push notification

Cenus.live push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a very good, affordable and also really efficient advertising tool1. It enables the vendor to link the buyers’ interest to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he desires to purchase is available at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this possibility and purchase it. Considering the incredibly low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing tool is a much-loved thing among the advertising teams of big internet stores.

Nevertheless, such a successful strategy could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the people of malware attack is an excellent basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup promotions. And Cenus.live advertisements is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the Cenus.live
SiteCenus.live
HostingAS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC
United States, Santa Clara
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address147.182.255.121
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorSweredth, Blnq, Evlsn
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Cenus.live virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming infected by the adware that trigger the Cenus.live popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may also be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is presented as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of users often make use of the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different apps that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these sorts of software are unsafe, due to the fact that it is extremely easy to integrate a Cenus.live malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Cenus.live popup malware can likewise be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the unusual website. Such sites are in most cases packed with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners often permit any kind of promos to be published on their web page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement provider realizes what will occur when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally get something much more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

The statistic shows that people dislike popup advertising more than other types of promotions

Potentially undesirable applications, like Cenus.live popup virus can initiate a lot of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the single effect – pop-up notifications may show you the banners, where you are offered to download one more unknown program, or “a perfect security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related promotions are also used as a spreading method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not clicking these banners, they can be clicked by someone who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Cenus.live pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Cenus.live adware clearing includes 2 sections. Initially, we need to exterminate the malware, and after that repair the results of its action. The removal procedure is really simple, since it may be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is present on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its large resources utilization, as well as some failures that can be crucial for some types of individuals, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is most likely impossible. Moreover, a variety of trojan viruses have the ability to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will certainly remove the viruses from your PC and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s manage Cenus.live adware first.

Removing Cenus.live popup virus with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

  • Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware. After the installation, you will be offered to perform the Standard Scan. Approve this action.
  • Gridinsoft Anti-Malware during the scan process

  • Standard scan checks the logical disk where the system files are stored, together with the files of programs you have already installed. The scan lasts up to 6 minutes.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware scan results

  • When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Cenus.live malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware - After Cleaning

Now, when the computer is clean of viruses, we can proceed to the browser reset. You can do this step manually, as well as with the use of GridinSoft Anti-Malware.

Reset browser settings to default

Manual method of browser reset

To reset Edge, do the following steps :
  1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :
  2. Reseting the Edge browser

  3. After picking the Reset Settings option, you will see the following menu, stating about the settings which will be reverted to original :
For Mozilla Firefox, do the next actions :
  1. Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :
  2. The first step to revert Mozilla Firefox

  3. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :
  4. The second step of Firefox restoration
    After choosing this option, you will see the next message :
    The last step for Firefox
If you use Google Chrome
  1. Open Settings tab, find the “Advanced” button. In the extended tab choose the “Reset and clean up” button :
  2. In the appeared list, click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults” :
  3. Finally, you will see the window, where you can see all the settings which will be reset to default :
Opera can be reset in the next way
  1. Open Settings menu by pressing the gear icon in the toolbar (left side of the browser window), then click “Advanced” option, and choose “Browser” button in the drop-down list. Scroll down, to the bottom of the settings menu. Find there “Restore settings to their original defaults” option :

  2. After clicking the “Restore settings…” button, you will see the window, where all settings, which will be reset, are shown :

When the browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your web browser will connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the web page you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text3:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
# localhost name resolution is handle within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

Find the hosts.txt file in C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc directory. Rename this file to “hosts.old.txt” (to distinguish it from the new one), and then move the file you created on the desktop to this folder. Remove the hosts.old from this folder. Now you have your hosts file as good as new.

However, there is one issue that makes things a lot more difficult to repair, specifically without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware variants that are used to show you the Cenus.live pop-up promotions are adjusting the deep browser settings, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to fix your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the typical, till you try to open settings again.

Reset your browser settings with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

To reset your browser with GridinSoft Anti-Malware, open the Tools tab, and click the “Reset browser settings” button.

Tools tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

You can see the list of the options for each browser. By default, they are set up in the manner which fits the majority of users. Press the “Reset” button (lower right corner). In a minute your browser will be as good as new.

Reset Browser Settings tab in GridinSoft Anti-Malware

The browser reset is recommended to perform through the antivirus tool by GridinSoft, because last is also able to reset the HOSTS file without any additional commands.

How to Remove Cenus.live Pop-ups?

Name: Cenus.live

Description: Cenus.live - a lot of users became a target for the pop-up advertisements. I have a lot of friends who literally bombed me with the questions like “how to remove Cenus.live push notifications?” or “why do Cenus.live pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Cenus.live pop-ups, which may corrupt your browser’s correct performance, and create a lot of troubles while you are working.

Operating System: Windows

Application Category: Adware

Sending
User Review
3.6 (5 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)

References

  1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and also the reasons why I suggest it for malware elimination.
  3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.

About the author

Wilbur Woodham

I was a technical writer from early in my career, and consider IT Security one of my foundational skills. I’m sharing my experience here, and I hope you find it useful.

Leave a Reply

Sending