Fireball adware capable of infecting almost 250 million computers: Says CheckPoint research report

CheckPoint Researchers in their recent reports have revealed that another adware nicknamed Fireball can affect around 250 million computers. As per the researchers, China based digital marketing company Rafotech is accountable for the increase of a new inter-connected adware family that is distressing millions of computers in the process.

As per CheckPoint's investigation, an adware has been designed by Rafotech which is capable of hijacking users' browsers with a single reason of redirecting the traffic to false search engines. According to CheckPoint these forged search engines do nothing but redirect the queries to either Google or Yahoo's search engines and in return get a commission in the process. "Fireball has the ability to spy on victims, perform efficient malware dropping, and execute any malicious code in the infected machines, this creates a massive security flaw in targeted machines and networks," the researchers observed in their blog post. Rafotech is scattering this adware by bunching it with lawful software and not contributing an opt-out option while installing the software. 

As per the reports, India proves to be the most affected country with around 25.3 million infected PCs or around 10.1 percent of all infections. While Brazil scores the second position with 24.1 million infected devices, also Indonesia had 13.1 million infections. The US had over 5.5 million infected machines.

Further, CheckPoint also observes that the 20 percent of all corporate networks universally are affected by Fireball adware. Users can also check whether they are a victim by opening their web browser and checking whether the homepage was set by the user. They also check whether they can alter it and see if they be familiar with the default search engine. Additionally, the infected users can uninstall the adware by heading over to Programs and Features list in the Windows Control Panel. On Mac, users can drag the doubtful file to trash by locating applications using the finder and then emptying the trash.

Further, the report also highlighted that the adware is distressing both PCs and smartphones.