Yahoo redirect malware on my MacBook Pro

I suggest downloading and running EtreCheck and posting its report in a reply to this Discussion.

Instructions are here: How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report - Apple Community

Nothing in those three folders ought to be the cause. EtreCheck is a more comprehensive tool and it is likely to reveal some actionable information.

That's very helpful. Those two google.com entries shouldn't be there.

To fix it, read Mr. Etresoft's instructions, here: Fixing a hacked /etc/hosts file - Apple Community. They are written a lot better than I could do. If you need help following any of it though, please write back.

• The Bare Bones software BBEdit he writes about in Step 2 is not free. It is however priceless. Having said that you can probably use TextEdit, so try it first before buying anything you might not require.

Edit: I just noticed BBEdit offers a 30 day free evaluation period. In keeping with Etresoft's highly specific instructions, I suggest that you go ahead and download the trial version for the purposes of fixing this particular problem.

Thanks. I will have more suggestions but for now please do the following.

Open the Terminal app — it's in your Mac's Utilities folder and looks like this

At the prompt, type (or copy/paste)

cat /etc/hosts

... followed by the Return or Enter key.

Copy the results of that command, and post them in a reply. A typical example of the Hosts file contents looks like this:

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1	localhost
255.255.255.255	broadcasthost
::1             localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost

This is just a typical example. Yours may not look exactly like it. It may reveal a clue, or not.

Jeanenegoad wrote:

Google is my default browser but I am redirected to Yahoo every time I search. I've deleted most things that I do not recognize, but can't figure out where the malware is hiding. Has anyone successfully removed this?

John Galt gives some excellent advice here - Removing Search Engine Redirects - Apple Community

Google is my default browser ...

Please clear up a potential misunderstanding.

Does this problem manifest when you are using Safari? The reason for asking is that Google is a search engine. Google calls their browser product Chrome.

😊

It's Mr. etresoft who deserves the credit. Without his program EtreCheck and User Tip for fixing a hacked Hosts file, identifying and resolving the problem would be lot more involved and time-consuming. I suspect even Apple would have required advanced level support.

John Galt wrote:

Edit: I just noticed BBEdit offers a 30 day free evaluation period. In keeping with Etresoft's highly specific instructions, I suggest that you go ahead and download the trial version for the purposes of fixing this particular problem.

The BBEdit “free mode” replaced TextWrangler a while back.

The 30 day trial gets full feature access, then BBEdit reverts to what is effectively better than TextWrangler.

https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/download.html

https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/comparison.html