Forced Chrome extensions get removed, keep reappearing

[Corrine]

From Malwarebytes Blog by Metallica, Forced Chrome extensions get removed, keep reappearing:

In the continued saga of annoying search extensions we have a new end-of-level boss.

Victims have been reporting browser extensions that were removed by Malwarebytes, but "magically" came back later. Since the victims also complained about the message saying their browser was "managed",

. . .

The culprits turned out to be search extensions. Which is often the case when we spot potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) that use malware tactics to get installed and gain persistence.

The search hijackers "active search bar" and "custom search bar" were both available in the Chrome web store at the time of writing even though we reported them days ago.

See the complete article at the referenced link noting that Malwarebytes detects these browser hijackers as PUP.Optional.ActiveSearchBar and PUP.Optional.CustomSearchBar.

[xrobwx71]

Thanks Corrine.

[Corrine]

Actually, Pieter/Metallica is the one to thank since he pointed it out to me.  :)