Malware seems to be affecting browser settings
Well, after all my years on computers I finally made a careless mistake with my downloads... I accidentally downloaded what I believe is some sort of malware. I was trying to download one program, but I was half-awake and clicked an ad that was pretending to be the download link that I wanted, and ended up fully installing it before I realized it wasn't the right one. It installed FlashPlayer (or something pretending to be FlashPlayer) and Opera (again, possibly pretending to be Opera), and seems to have changed settings in Safari and Chrome. When I opened Chrome, two tabs called "Bar1 New Tab" would open. In Safari on some websites, pop ups that would normally open in a background tab now open as active tabs, and when I do a google search on Safari, whatever I type in seemingly any text box (including this one) now shows in the LaunchPad search bar as well. Launchpad also seems to get stuck on the second page of apps, and won't go back to the first page unless I actually click the first white dot at the bottom of the screen instead of swiping with two fingers on the trackpad.
I purchased BitDefender and ran a full system scan and it found two items called "Adware.MAC.Pirrit.JD" and "Adware.MAC.Generic.19234" and deleted them, but the symptoms listed above still occur (except the new tabs on Chrome, which I resetted in the Chrome settings).
I would have no problem doing a factory reset of my operating system, but I'm unsure if this is the best thing to do. Does anyone know what could be causing these problems?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.1
