Yahoo Search - Browser Hijackers Using Legitimate Search Engines

Browser hijackers are a very common type of potentially unwanted application. Before we look at hijackers a little more in-depth, we should first explain what a potentially unwanted application is.

Potentially unwanted applications or PUAs are a category of software that occupies a nebulous grey area between legitimate software and full-blown, dangerous malware. While PUAs don't directly affect your system's files the way ransomware does and don't have the destructive power of viruses or the spying capabilities of Trojans, they still impair your user experience and can make changes to your system that you did not approve.

A common feature of many browser hijackers is that they will swap your favorite browser's home page and default search engine. If you suddenly see your home page is different and your searches using the browser's default search engine show up a little different, this is a sign of the likely presence of a browser hijacker.

A lot of the time, to mask their activity and keep a low profile, browser hijackers will use one common tactic. The hijacker not only changes your search engine but also captures your search queries - something that should never be done without explicit user consent.

In a lot of those setups, the hijacker will capture the user's search, collect whatever data they need, then funnel the query through a regular Yahoo search, using the legitimate Yahoo search engine, and return the results to the user.

This behavior can be detected by comparing the URL of a normal Yahoo search with the URL produced by a redirected Yahoo search that was first passed through a browser hijacker. Browser hijackers will place markers in the resulting URLs that will not be there in a regular Yahoo search.

This behavior can also be accompanied by the injection of advertising on the results page that will not be there if you simply visit Yahoo's search engine and run a query, in cases where the browser hijacker also shares some features with adware.

November 4, 2021
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