Search-boss malware taking over

[anamelie]

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Description of the issue: Search-boss hijacks my search bar and redirects it to bing every time. It affects Chrome, Edge, and Brave, but not Vivaldi right now.
How can this issue be reproduced? I don’t know how to reproduce it. Malwarebytes can’t even get rid of it completely. My issue lies in this setting:

"Site search

To search a specific site or part of Brave, type its shortcut in the address bar, followed by your preferred keyboard shortcut."

Expected result:
The search-boss makes a dozen or so of these shortcuts, overwriting the default shortcuts. The only way I’ve found to remove them is to click through and delete all of them. Eventually they come back no matter what I do. Also, they’re user preferences that come back after a fresh install, so uninstalling and reinstalling doesn’t help. I wish I could disable these entirely, but it’s not a setting anywhere.

Brave Version( check About Brave): 1.62.165

Additional Information: I haven’t had this issue on the brave mobile browser on my pixel.

[Mattches]

@anamelie,
Unfortunately there’s not a ton we can do for you here. Whatever malware you have on your system needs to be fully removed.

I would recommend a full system scan/clean — if MWB isn’t getting everything you may need to try a different software. And if that doesn’t work you might instead consider a full reformat of your machine.

Alternatively, you can call/take your machine into somewhere that provides live tech support that may be able to assist you.

[anamelie]

Thanks for the quick reply! I’ll go ahead and try some other antivirus software, but I’ll probably switch back to linux soon. I mostly wanted to document the issue here so at least someone would know it’s a problem