Windows 10: Is Edge Easily Hijacked by Malicious Sites?

My impression of Edge is that it is easily hijacked by malicious sites. You know what I am talking about: it's the sites that say your computer is infected and you need to call some number, and Edge never lets you stop the popups to get out of the site (despite the Block Popups setting being on!), forcing you to use the Task Manager to put the ugliness fully down. And then unless you know to hold the Ctrl button down, re-starting the Edge leaves you right where you left off in reloading the malicious site.

Describing a browser as "lightweight" can be either a compliment or a major criticism. I'm going for the latter on Edge.

:)

 

Yahoo Ads are hijacking Edge

As of today Yahoo ads are hijacking and redirecting Edge to malicious websites.

 

Message on computer and jammed system

So how do you get rid of this situation without calling the malicious number? I was able to get out of the annoying looping voice and lockup of the Edge browser by CTRL-ALT-DEL and go to task manager to kill it. But it seemed to have hijacked my homepage
because everytime I open the edge browser, it pops up again.

Interesting that a search for this number results in all sorts of malicious looking links.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

Yes I think you are correct. I had never had a problem with one of those pop ups til this week. I click on a link in facebook and got infected by malware. Windows defender was able to remove it quite quickly however but not without going into safe mode. Chrome would always block those when I was using it.

 

No. You are misusing the term "hijacked". The browser isn't hijacked in the normal sense. Typically when a browser is hijacked, it's when a Trojan is installed and plug-ins are installed. In this case, it's just a cleverly crafted page that somehow disables the ability to close it (I don't understand what popups have to do with anything, the site doesn't create any popups). Once you've closed the page, there is nothing left on your computer, so it's not "hijacked".

By the way, I've seen the same behavior with Chrome as well.

 

That's not what happens at all. Even when you close the browser it does not go away. If you try to reopen the browser it will open that page everytime no matter what your edge settings are. Resetting edge does not remove it. I had to run defender offline to remove it. It installs a rootkit. That's pretty weak security.

 

This can be wider than just Edge. I had it happen with W8.1 a few weeks ago. The user didn't know what he'd clicked on but it completely hijacked the IE11 homepage settings. I had to clean it up offline.

 

It does not install a root kit. It's just a web page. And the only reason it reopens is because Edge reopens your previously open tabs when you kill it, regardless of your settings. It's unfortunate, but that's nothing to do with the page. It's a "fake" virus warning and there is no virus.

Don't believe me? Kill edge right now, then reopen it, you will see that your open tabs come back up regardless of what your settings are.

Defender doesn't do anything... you "fixed" the problem by going offline, and then reloading the page (which of course can't load now because you're offline) and then closing it (because the javascript can't run, it now allows you to do this).

 

I disagree. The term hijacking is entirely and properly descriptive of what happens and need not include the concept that code is actually altered in the storage device outside the http client (browser).

And I believe Microsoft agrees with me. Hijacking only need refer to unwanted behavior in which the user is unable to control the browser--and leave the user with the feeling of helplessness--no matter how temporarily, and the browser (Edge) and/or system (Win10) offer no effective means of restoring control to the user. Edge continues to make the user feel helpless, stressed, and panicked. The user attempts to close a tab that refuses to close.

Moreover, I described the problem with Edge that when the user has been forced to call the task manager and end the process in the nonroutine way, re-opening Edge still creates the problem if Edge has options set that all tabs that were open at the previous close are re-opened again, creating the continued problem of the tab with the malicious site refusing to be closed. Not all users are sophisticated enough to know how to open Edge with no windows/tabs opened that were previously open.

And yes, web documents at malicious sites also attempt to take control of far more mature "heavyweight" browsers like Firefox and Chrome, but these browsers are sophisticated enough to realize that Javascript code in the page is attempting to create a alert event (not child window, which is why the "block popups" setting has no effect) creation loop and put up its own alert like Chrome does in which it requests of the user that the page is trying to open up endless alert dialog boxes and does the user want to stop this execution. The user then can set the checkbox control to true (click it) and stop the hijacking by alert dialogs.