Remove CrptGate Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Written by Wilbur Woodham
CrptGate pop-up alerts may appear out of the blue, covering the post of the page you checked or opening your web browser when you don’t desire it to be opened.

Clicking on the CrptGate ad may result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the manual of CrptGate popups removal in various ways, and also inspecting your system for other malware existence.

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What are CrptGate pop-ups?

CrptGate popups are a consequence of adware action. Adware is a kind of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a major volume of profit for adware distributors. These promotions might include explicit composition, or have a link to malicious content/website, due to the fact that adware maintainers have no purpose to examine the goodness of the content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

CrptGate push notification

CrptGate push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, cheap and extremely efficient marketing instrument1. It enables the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their site, and the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they want to buy. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to buy is provided at the online store he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will definitely use this opportunity and purchase it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amidst the marketing teams of large online sellers.

However, such a successful scheme could not be missed by malware developers. Ability to show the popup ads forcibly to the victims of malware attack is an excellent basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Crptgate.com promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a details for the CrptGate
SiteCrptgate.com
HostingAS34655 DuoDecad IT Services Luxembourg S.a r.l.
Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address93.93.51.223
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorNews, Vevdet, News
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the CrptGate virus?

There are a huge amount of ways of becoming infected by the adware that create the CrptGate popups storm. A lion’s part of this computer virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of people frequently utilize the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, different utilities that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are unsafe, since it is quite easy to integrate a CrptGate 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.

CrptGate popup malware may likewise be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the odd web page. Such web pages are typically filled with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors typically approve any kind of promotions to be posted on their web page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the ad contractor realizes what will occur when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may also get something much more dangerous, like ransomware or coin miner; the big share of coin miners distribution is exactly after the malicious ads.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially undesirable programs, like CrptGate popup virus may provoke a lot of problems on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-up notifications may show you the ads, where you are offered to get another unknown application, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often spread with the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a normal one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a distribution method by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these banners, they can be clicked by someone who also makes use of 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 and money loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of CrptGate pop-up advertisements?

The guide of CrptGate adware elimination includes 2 parts. First, we need to remove the malware, and after that take care of the consequences of its activity. The removal process is quite simple, due to the fact that it can be performed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware software that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, as a result of its huge resources utilization, along with some bugs that can be serious for some categories of users, Defender is frequently disabled by the users, so its usage is likely impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses have the ability to disable the embedded antivirus. It is much better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d suggest you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware tool that will surely exterminate the malware from your system and make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s handle CrptGate adware initially.

Removing CrptGate 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 CrptGate 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 ensure that your browser will definitely be connected the proper DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following content3:

# 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.

Nonetheless, there is one problem that makes the things much harder to restore, specifically without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware versions that are used to show you the CrptGate pop-up ads are adjusting the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your machine was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, but significant lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, up until you attempt to open settings one more time.

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 CrptGate Pop-ups?

Name: CrptGate

Description: CrptGate - 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 Crptgate.com push notifications?” or “why do Crptgate.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with CrptGate 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

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References

  1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
  2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also the reasons why I recommend 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.

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