Remove Ganef.live Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Ganef.live pop-up notices may appear out of the blue, covering the post of the site you checked or opening your web browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking the Ganef.live ad can trigger the injection of different malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guide of Ganef.live popups removal in various ways, as well as checking your computer for additional malware presence.

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What are Ganef.live pop-ups?

Ganef.live popups are an outcome of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which produces a large volume of income for adware distributors. These promotions might consist of explicit information, or have a web link to harmful content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the material they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Ganef.live push notification

Ganef.live push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, low-cost and also extremely productive advertising tool1. It enables the seller to attach the customers’ attention to their site, as well as the customers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is available at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this opportunity and buy it. Considering the very small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a marketing method is a much-loved thing among the advertising departments of large internet retailers.

Nonetheless, such a rewarding strategy could not be missed by virus creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the targets of malware invasion is an ideal basis for malicious adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Ganef.live ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Here is a summary for the Ganef.live
SiteGanef.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 behaviorSpecialpromob2, Specialpromoa1, Cmproclean
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Ganef.live virus?

There are a plenty of ways of getting contaminated by the adware that lead to the Ganef.live popups storm. A lion’s part of this malware incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware can additionally be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is provided as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals regularly work with the dubious programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free, or even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are risky, since it is extremely easy to include a Ganef.live malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Ganef.live popup virus can additionally be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the odd web page. Such websites are in most cases packed with intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually accept any promotions to be published on their web page. Thus, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the advertisement contractor knows what will occur when you press this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can additionally get something much more hazardous, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation 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 applications, like Ganef.live pop-up virus may initiate a wide range of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only problem – pop-ups may present you the promotions, where you are offered to get one more strange program, or “a amazing anti-malware tool”. Scareware is usually spread with the last motto. Potentially undesirable programs, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is very hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the PUPs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they can be clicked by whoever who also uses your personal computer – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to deal with it without information loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with anti-malware programs as soon as possible.

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

The manual of Ganef.live adware clearing includes 2 sections. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and afterwards deal with the effects of its action. The elimination process is pretty easy, due to the fact that it can be executed even with the use of Microsoft Defender – anti-malware tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its large resources usage, along with some problems that may be pivotal for some types of individuals, Defender is often disabled by the users, so its use is likely impossible. In addition, various 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 vulnerabilities.

I would certainly suggest you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven anti-malware device that will certainly remove the viruses from your personal computer and also create an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection feature. However, let’s take care of Ganef.live adware first.

Removing Ganef.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 Ganef.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 ensure that your web browser will definitely connect the correct DNS while connecting to the web page you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’s desktop, then 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.

However, there is one problem that makes the things a lot harder to repair, especially without the anti-malware software. Most of adware variants that are utilized to show you the Ganef.live pop-up ads are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your machine was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly collapse quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the typical, till you attempt 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 Ganef.live Pop-ups?

Name: Ganef.live

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

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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.

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