Clicking on the Hanut.live advertisement may trigger the injection of various malware or unwanted programs. In this post, you will see the manual of Hanut.live popups clearing in various manners, and also checking your PC for extra viruses presence.

What are Hanut.live pop-ups?

Hanut.live popups are a consequence of adware activity. Adware is a type of malware that suggests you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click promotions, which creates a large amount of income for adware distributors. These advertisements might include sometimes shocking information, or have a web link to malicious content/website, considering that adware maintainers have no reason to examine the goodness of the web content they are going to reveal – their single target is cash.

Hanut.live push notification.

Pop-up advertising itself is a good, affordable and really effective advertising instrument¹. It allows the vendor to attach the buyers’ attention to their site, and the buyers to get the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the person will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he desires to purchase is offered at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% discount, one will certainly use this possibility and buy it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising and marketing method is a favourite thing amidst the advertising departments of huge online retailers.

Nonetheless, such a profitable system could not be missed by virus developers. Option to demonstrate the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware invasion is a perfect basis for evil-minded adjustments with the popup advertisements. And Hanut.live advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this scheme.

Site	Hanut.live
Hosting	AS14061 DigitalOcean, LLC United States, Santa Clara
Infection Type	Adware, Push notifications, Unwanted Ads, Pop-up Ads
IP Address	147.182.255.121
Symptoms	Annoying pop-up ads in the right corner.
Similar behavior	Operatestronguberinfo, Goessipwash, Cinewstopia
Fix Tool	GridinSoft Anti-MalwareTo remove possible virus infections, try to scan your PC

How have I got the Hanut.live virus?

There are a huge amount of methods of becoming contaminated by the adware that lead to the Hanut.live popups storm. A lion’s part of this virus cases is after the free software or cracked programs, that are distributed on the peering networks. Freeware may likewise be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A plenty of users frequently use the unreliable programs from untrusted providers: abandonware, a wide range of tools that are free of cost, or even hacked programs. All of these types of software are dangerous, due to the fact that it is extremely easy to include a Hanut.live malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm inside of the Windows optimization tool.

Hanut.live popup virus can likewise be concealed in the promotion somewhere on the odd site. Such sites are usually loaded with colorful and blinking advertisements, and their proprietors generally accept any promos to be posted on their page. For this reason, clicking on such banners is a risky thing: only the ad contractor realizes what will happen when you press this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you can also get something much more risky, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious advertisements.

The statistic shows that people dislike popup advertising more than other types of promotions

Potentially undesirable applications, like Hanut.live popup virus may initiate a lot of different problems on your computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-ups may display you the ads, where you are offered to get one more unknown application, or “a effective anti-malware tool”. Scareware is often distributed under the last motto. Potentially unwanted programs, in turn, can have spyware functionality. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a good one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and dubious antiviruses, popup-related banners are also exploited as a spreading way by various trojan viruses, for example – coin miners. The consequences of actions of such malware is 100% unpleasant, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the situation can become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without data loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Hanut.live pop-up advertisements?

The manual of Hanut.live adware elimination consists of 2 sections. First, we need to get rid of the malware, and after that fix the effects of its activity. The removal process is really easy, since it can be done even with using Microsoft Defender – security program that is available on all personal computers with Windows 8/10. Nevertheless, due to its large resources consumption, along with some errors that can be serious for some kinds of users, Defender is oftentimes disabled by the users, so its use is likely impossible. Additionally, different trojan viruses are able to switch off the embedded antivirus. It is far better to use the separated program that will not have such vulnerabilities.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven anti-malware device that will surely eliminate the malware from your computer and also create an impenetrable cover with a Proactive protection feature. But let’s handle Hanut.live adware initially.

Download GridinSoft Anti-Malware

Removing Hanut.live popup virus with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

• Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware. After the installation, you will be offered to perform the Standard Scan. Approve this action.
• Standard scan checks the logical disk where the system files are stored, together with the files of programs you have already installed. The scan lasts up to 6 minutes.
• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Hanut.live malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

Now, when the computer is clean of viruses, we can proceed to the browser reset. You can do this step manually, as well as with the use of GridinSoft Anti-Malware.

Reset browser settings to default

Manual method of browser reset

1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :
2. After picking the Reset Settings option, you will see the following menu, stating about the settings which will be reverted to original :

1. Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :
2. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

1. Open Settings tab, find the “Advanced” button. In the extended tab choose the “Reset and clean up” button :
2. In the appeared list, click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults” :
3. Finally, you will see the window, where you can see all the settings which will be reset to default :

1. Open Settings menu by pressing the gear icon in the toolbar (left side of the browser window), then click “Advanced” option, and choose “Browser” button in the drop-down list. Scroll down, to the bottom of the settings menu. Find there “Restore settings to their original defaults” option :


2. After clicking the “Restore settings…” button, you will see the window, where all settings, which will be reset, are shown :

When the web browsers are reset, you need to make sure that your browser will definitely connect the proper DNS while connecting to the website you need. Create a text file named “hosts” on your computer’s desktop, after that open it and fill it with the following text³:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
# localhost name resolution is handle within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

Find the hosts.txt file in C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc directory. Rename this file to “hosts.old.txt” (to distinguish it from the new one), and then move the file you created on the desktop to this folder. Remove the hosts.old from this folder. Now you have your hosts file as good as new.

Nonetheless, there is one issue that makes the things a lot more difficult to fix, especially without the anti-malware program. A lot of adware versions that are utilized to show you the Hanut.live pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your PC was infected by pop-up-related malware, your browser will crash quickly. In certain cases, you will see no crash, but huge lag spike after pushing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 seconds, and after that it will be back to the normal, till you attempt to open settings one more time.

Reset your browser settings with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

To reset your browser with GridinSoft Anti-Malware, open the Tools tab, and click the “Reset browser settings” button.

You can see the list of the options for each browser. By default, they are set up in the manner which fits the majority of users. Press the “Reset” button (lower right corner). In a minute your browser will be as good as new.

The browser reset is recommended to perform through the antivirus tool by GridinSoft, because last is also able to reset the HOSTS file without any additional commands.

References

1. More about pop-up ads on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware overview and the reasons why I recommend it for malware elimination.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.