urgent Weird Virus Problem in Chrome

[MattShnoop]

Just today I've started seeing a weird problem which I can immediately pin is some sort of virus or malware:

 

 

I can tell from both the nature of this message and it's language that it is not official. 

 

It happens on multiple sites. First, on Blender's website, when I went to check it's version history. Next, on my Facebook, then YouTube, and now on LTT forums.

It even happens when I open a new tab: Immediately upon hitting CTRL+T, I get his message:

 

Hitting either OK, Cancel, or ESC, brings me to a blank page with this URL:

 

My first instinct was to run a full antivirus scan (Avast Pro Antivirus), and an Adware scan (Adware Remover Tool by TSA), however I've realized that if this alert is in itself a virus, and it's telling me to run an antivirus scan, it probably is best to not listen to it: for whatever reason.

 

I've tested in Edge, and it seems not to happen there: it is a Chrome only problem.

 

Any ideas as to the first step I should take?

 

EDIT: I just updated to the most recent version of Chrome, and it still happens. It now is happening with every page I open, instead of every few.

Edited June 17, 2017 by MattShnoop

[Shoob]

Go to chrome://extensions and see if there's anything suspecious there.

[NoRomanBatmansAllowed]

Get adw_cleaner.

 

It used to be private and now it's owned by malwarebytes, and for all my problems it's worked wonders.

https://toolslib.net/downloads/viewdownload/1-adwcleaner/

[MattShnoop]

4 minutes ago, Pandalf said:

Go to chrome://extensions and see if there's anything suspecious there.

You're amazing. Nothing suspicious was in my extensions, however when I booted up Chrome this morning I was told that Chrometana needed new persmissions. I thought nothing of it, Extensions usually do when they update.

 

I just did a quick test and disabling Chrometana stops the problem. 

 

(For info, Chrometana basically intercepts Cortana's and Bing searches and turns them into Google searches)

[NoRomanBatmansAllowed]

3 minutes ago, MattShnoop said:

You're amazing. Nothing suspicious was in my extensions, however when I booted up Chrome this morning I was told that Chrometana needed new persmissions. I thought nothing of it, Extensions usually do when they update.

 

I just did a quick test and disabling Chrometana stops the problem. 

 

(For info, Chrometana basically intercepts Cortana's and Bing searches and turns them into Google searches)

Solution: Kill Cortana.

 

I actually got it to work. Really scrappy way to get it out, but I think I finally actually deleted cortana off the system.

The problem is when I did that there's no search function in the start menu

 

[Shoob]

12 minutes ago, MattShnoop said:

You're amazing. Nothing suspicious was in my extensions, however when I booted up Chrome this morning I was told that Chrometana needed new persmissions. I thought nothing of it, Extensions usually do when they update.

 

I just did a quick test and disabling Chrometana stops the problem. 

 

(For info, Chrometana basically intercepts Cortana's and Bing searches and turns them into Google searches)

You're welcome. Reviews on the extension suggest it really installs some malware. It's a shame that Google allows such stuff to go through.

[MattShnoop]

Just now, Pandalf said:

You're welcome. Reviews on the extension suggest it really installs some malware. It's a shame that Google allows such stuff to go through.

It's odd: it was behaving fine until this morning. Truly a shame.

[MagicBall]

Rip Chrometana I guess. It was a really useful extension. Don't know what would drive them to do this.

[ThomasRules]

On 6/17/2017 at 7:25 PM, MagicBall said:

Rip Chrometana I guess. It was a really useful extension. Don't know what would drive them to do this.

Just to clear this up, their account got compromised, and someone released an update with malware in it