Firefox constantly gets re-infected with akamaihd search malware

[steveLONDON]

Anyone know how they do this?

I keep reinstalling Firefox, in Prefs I delete the 'Browser Default' search engine which must be put there by the malware.

I also de-selected the 'Auto update search engines' option in general prefs.

Somehow there is something that keeps reviving the malware and redirecting searches to this akamaihd.net domain after a few days.

Really annoying but it's only Firefox that seems to suffer from this. Safari and Chrome seem to stay uninfected.

Firefox is only used by one person in my house an it's for Facebook - does that mean there is something on FB that is repeatedly infecting the browser? Or is there some extension I can just delete manually to fix this?

 

[Brian33]

I've never used it, but I've seen people recommend and have success with using MalwareBytes to remove various malware. I think it's likely it will find and resolve your problem, and that would be the easiest approach.

I suspect that the malware has installed a LaunchDaemon or LaunchAgent program that is re-installing the changes to Firefox. These programs can be started automatically at system boot-up or at user login. Since there are three different locations for these programs and identifying the problem one can be tricky, I suggest trying MalwareBytes first.

Is your Firefox version up to date? While it's possible that visits to Facebook could be re-installing the malware, if Firefox is up to date I would think that would be pretty unlikely.
[doublepost=1559159677][/doublepost]Oh, by the way, reportedly the MalwareBytes free version is all you need for this.

 

[NoBoMac]

Will second Malwarebytes.

Probably have an extension that is bogus. Or installed some "free" software that is really malware. Or the old "your Adobe is out if date" scam.