Remove Hao360.cn Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Hao360.cn pop-up alerts can appear out of the blue, covering the content of the page you explored or opening your browser when you don’t need it to be opened.

Clicking the Hao360.cn ad can lead to the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the guideline of Hao360.cn popups removal in multiple manners, as well as inspecting your computer for other malware presence.

What are Hao360.cn pop-ups?

Hao360.cn popups are an effect of adware action. Adware is a sort of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click advertisements, which creates a massive volume of income for adware distributors. These promotions may include sometimes shocking composition, or have a link to harmful content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is cash.

Hao360.cn push notification

Hao360.cn push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, low-priced and really effective marketing instrument1. It permits the seller to link the customers’ attention to their website, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is offered at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will undoubtedly use this chance and buy it. Considering the incredibly small cost for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a much-loved thing amongst the advertising teams of large online retailers.

Nevertheless, such a successful system could not be missed by malware creators. Potential to demonstrate the popup ads forcibly to the people of malware attack is an ideal basis for malevolent tricks with the popup ads. And Hao360.cn promotions is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Hao360.cn
Site Hao360.cn
Hosting AS45090 Shenzhen Tencent Computer Systems Company Limited
China, Guangzhou
Infection Type Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address 106.52.144.89
Symptoms Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior Keithlen, Cdn, Storegreatly
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Hao360.cn virus?

There are a number of ways of becoming infected by the adware that lead to the Hao360.cn popups tornado. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the main web page, and the adware is delivered as a legitimate bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of individuals regularly use the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, or perhaps hacked programs. Every one of these sorts of applications are risky, due to the fact that it is extremely easy to include a Hao360.cn malware under the guise of part of the license hacking script, or as a part of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

People dislike popups

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

How can I get rid of Hao360.cn pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Hao360.cn adware clearing contains 2 sections. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and after that repair the consequences of its action. The elimination process is very easy, due to the fact that it can be executed even with making use of Microsoft Defender – security software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its significant resources consumption, as well as some problems that may be crucial for some categories of individuals, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its usage is probably impossible. Furthermore, different trojan viruses have the ability to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

    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 Hao360.cn malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.
  • GridinSoft Anti-Malware - After Cleaning

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 web browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your browser will definitely connect the right DNS while connecting to the website you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines3:

# 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 the things much more difficult to fix, especially without the anti-malware program. Most of adware variations that are utilized to show you the Hao360.cn pop-up advertisements are adjusting the deep browser setups, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your computer was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash quickly. In some cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and then it will be back to the normal, till you try to open settings once more.

References

  1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
  2. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.

About the author

Wilbur Woodham

Technical writer covering malware detections, unwanted programs, and browser-based threats. Wilbur turns research notes into step-by-step guides that Windows users can follow safely.

Leave a Comment