Remove Kekonu Virus — How to Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
Kekonu pop-up notices can appear unexpectedly, covering the post of the website you visited or opening your browser when you do not wish it to be opened.

Clicking on the Kekonu promotion can result in the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Kekonu popups clearing in various manners, as well as examining your PC for other viruses existence.

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What are Kekonu pop-ups?

Kekonu popups are a result of adware activity. Adware is a kind of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which produces a substantial volume of income for adware representatives. These ads may include explicit information, or have a link to malicious content/website, since adware maintainers have no reason to inspect the goodness of the material they are going to show – their solitary target is cash.

Kekonu push notification

Kekonu push notification.

Pop-up marketing itself is an excellent, low-priced and extremely efficient advertising solution1. It makes it possible for the vendor to attach the customers’ attention to their website, as well as the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the customer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he likes to buy is provided at the online shop he/she checked out previously with a 15% price cut, one will surely use this chance and get it. Considering the extremely low price for the popups and their targeting, such a promotion and marketing instrument is a favorite thing amongst the advertising departments of big online sellers.

Nevertheless, such a successful system could not be missed by malware creators. Ability to demonstrate the popup advertisements by force to the victims of malware attack is an excellent basis for malevolent adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Kekonum.com ads is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Kekonu site
SiteKekonum.com
HostingAS50245 Serverel Inc.
Netherlands, Amsterdam
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address62.122.171.6
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorMyquiztionnaire, Laddleoser, Defenderlab
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Kekonu virus?

There are a lot of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that trigger the Kekonu popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus instances is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware can likewise be downloaded from the official site, and the adware is provided as a legal bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A number of individuals oftentimes work with 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 dangerous, due to the fact that it is quite easy to include a Kekonu 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.

Kekonu popup virus may additionally be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the strange site. Such sites are generally loaded with bright and blinking ads, and their owners usually accept any type of promotions to be posted on their page. Therefore, clicking such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement provider realizes what will happen when you click this advertisement. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or undesirable programs, you may additionally receive something much more threatening, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial 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 Kekonu popup virus may initiate a variety of troubles on your PC. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications may present you the promotions, where you are offered to get another strange application, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often spread with the use of the last slogun. Potentially unwanted 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 potentially unwanted programs and fake antiviruses, popup-related banners are also chosen as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such malware is 100% unwanted, and can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these ads, they may be clicked by someone 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 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 Kekonu pop-up advertisements?

The tutorial of Kekonu adware removal includes 2 sections. First, we need to exterminate the malware, and then take care of the effects of its action. The elimination task is very easy, since it can be performed even with using Microsoft Defender – security software that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, as a result of its substantial resources usage, as well as some problems that may be serious for some groups of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its utilization is likely impossible. Moreover, different trojan viruses are able to shut off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I would certainly recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven security tool that will certainly remove the malware from your PC and make an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Kekonu adware first.

Removing Kekonu 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 Kekonu 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 web browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your web browser will connect the accurate DNS while connecting to the website you want. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your 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 trouble that makes the things a lot more difficult to fix, specifically without the anti-malware software. The majority of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Kekonu pop-up promotions are modifying the deep browser settings, 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 certainly collapse quickly. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, huge lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop responding for ~ 30 seconds, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, 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 Kekonu Pop-ups?

Name: Kekonu

Description: Kekonu - 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 Kekonum.com push notifications?” or “why do Kekonum.com pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with Kekonu 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 review and also the reasons why I suggest it for malware removal.
  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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