With that said, the browser seems to be having quite a rough time in dealing with security issues. Recently, it was bugged with the Chromeloader and Kristinaful malware, and now another one has already made its way. As of now, various users have voiced their concern that the browser has been infected with the Properties Malware extension. Here are all the malicious activities that it tends to perform-
Google Chrome ‘Properties’ Malware Extension: What It Does
This malware crashes the browser every couple of minutes.It creates a Chrome_pref or Chrome_settings folder in the Appdata > Local directory. The contents are a Javascript file named background, a JSON file named manifest, and a PNG file named properties. Apart from this, the malware redirects all the search requests to Bing.What’s even more intriguing is the fact that it even blocks the Malwarebytes and adblockers extensions. After every couple of minutes, it will perform a check in the Chrome_settings folder and check if all the three files [background, manifest, and properties] are present or not. If it is not there, then it will create them right away. There’s no point in manually deleting the Chrome_pref file or the extension, or removing the extension from the browser, as it will reinstall itself and re-create the Chrome_pref file.What is even more interesting is the fact that it creates these folders/files having a time stamp of 4 hours in the future. For example, if it is 1 PM currently, then the folders and files that it creates will have a time of 5 PM. So it tends to buy a buffer period of 4 hours beforehand!
All in all, the creators of this malicious extension have definitely put in some effort and a lot of brain-time seems to be involved as well. But they ended up leaving one loophole and that is what we will be exploiting right now. So without any further ado, let’s get started with the steps to permanently delete/remove the Google Chrome ‘Properties’ malware extension.
Google Chrome ‘Properties’ Malware Extension: How to Remove/Delete It
As mentioned before, the malware checks if all the three files are present in the Chrome_settings folded or not. If it is not there, then it will create them straightaway. So deleting is not an option. What you could instead do is create three new files having the same names that the Chrome_settings folder has and then replace it with them. Since the malware only performs a name check and not the content check, it will not verify what’s inside the files that you have created but would only see that all the three files with the required names are present in that directory and hence it wouldn’t create new ones. On that note, let’s put this tweak to the test and check out the results. That’s it. These were the steps to delete/remove the Google Chrome ‘Properties’ malware extension. While this malware is present for [at least] the past three months, but as far as the official stance on this matter is concerned, the developers are yet to acknowledge this issue, let alone give out any ETA for the rollout of a fix. As and when any of these two things happen, we will update this guide accordingly. In the meantime, the aforementioned workarounds are your best bet.
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