How to remove News-Zikuno pop-ups? — Fix Guide

Written by Wilbur Woodham
News-Zikuno pop-up notices can show up unexpectedly, covering the subject of the page you explored or opening your web browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking the News-Zikuno ad may trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this article, you will see the manual of News-Zikuno popups removal in multiple methods, and also inspecting your personal computer for other malware presence.

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What are News-Zikuno pop-ups?

News-Zikuno popups are a result of adware action. Adware is a type of malware that presents you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a large amount of earnings for adware distributors. These ads might have explicit composition, or have a link to malevolent content/website, since adware maintainers have no purpose to check the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is money.

News-Zikuno push notification

News-Zikuno push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is a good, cheap and extremely productive marketing method1. It enables the seller to link the buyers’ attention to their website, as well as the customers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they wish to buy. When the person will get a pop-up notification that the TV set he wishes to purchase is provided at the online shop he/she checked out earlier with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this possibility and buy it. Taking into consideration the extremely small cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing instrument is a favourite thing among the advertising departments of big online sellers.

Nonetheless, such a profitable strategy could not be missed by virus developers. Potential to show the popup advertisements by force to the people of malware invasion is an excellent basis for evil-minded tricks with the popup advertisements. And News-zikuno.cc ads is one of hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short details for the News-Zikuno
SiteNews-zikuno.cc
HostingAS61003 GlobalTeleHost Corp.
Germany, Frankfurt am Main
Infection TypeAdware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address193.108.117.37
SymptomsAnnoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behaviorTerestedine, Ayyubidgconv, Betgorebysson
Fix Tool
To remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the News-Zikuno virus?

There are a lot of ways of getting infected by the adware that cause the News-Zikuno popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus incidents is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Free software may additionally be downloaded from the main site, and the adware is presented as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of individuals regularly utilize the dubious programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, various tools that are free of cost, and even hacked programs. Every one of these kinds of software are dangerous, due to the fact that it is very simple to build in a News-Zikuno malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

News-Zikuno popup malware can additionally be hidden in the advertisement somewhere on the odd site. Such websites are typically loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their owners typically permit any kind of promos to be published on their page. Thus, clicking such banners is a risky thing: only the ad provider realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can likewise get something much more unsafe, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

People dislike popups

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

Potentially unwanted applications, like News-Zikuno pop-up virus may cause a wide range of different troubles on your personal computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications may show you the promotions, where you are offered to get one more strange application, or “a effective security tool”. Scareware is often distributed with the use of the last slogun. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, can have spyware functions. And it is pretty hard to distinguish the unwanted app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also exploited as a distribution way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they may be clicked by someone who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to get rid of the viruses with anti-malware applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of News-Zikuno pop-up advertisements?

The guide of News-Zikuno adware removal includes 2 parts. Initially, we need to get rid of the malware, and then deal with the effects of its activity. The removal procedure is really simple, due to the fact that it may be done even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is present on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. However, as a result of its large resources consumption, along with some bugs that can be pivotal for some groups of individuals, Defender is oftentimes turned off by the users, so its use is most likely impossible. Moreover, various trojan viruses are able to disable the embedded antivirus. It is better to make use of the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d recommend you to utilize Gridinsoft Anti-Malware2 – a well-proven antivirus tool that will definitely wipe out the malware from your personal computer and create an invulnerable cover with a Proactive protection function. However, let’s handle News-Zikuno adware initially.

Removing News-Zikuno 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 News-Zikuno 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 be connected the accurate DNS while connecting to the site you want. Create a text file titled “hosts” on your pc’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.

However, there is one problem that makes the things much harder to restore, especially without the anti-malware software. A lot of adware variants that are used to show you the News-Zikuno pop-up ads are modifying the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you try to change your browser settings after your system was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will collapse soon. Sometimes, you will see no crash, however, large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and afterwards it will be back to the normal, 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 News-Zikuno Pop-ups?

Name: News-Zikuno

Description: News-Zikuno - 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 News-zikuno.cc push notifications?” or “why do News-zikuno.cc pop-ups keep appearing on Chrome even after AdBlock installation?”. In this article we will show you how to deal with News-Zikuno 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 the reasons why I advise 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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