Mac malware: Premiere Opinion

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Level 1

4 points

Mac malware: Premiere Opinion

I made the stupid mistake of downloading UNRARX for Mac from an "apparently" good site. During the process of installation, I saw a small box with 5 questions. I could not skip it, and I needed UnrarX to open a difficult file. Well, I filled in the boxes with lame statements, just to pass that phase. Then UnrarX was installed and suddenly, an ad popped out of nowhere on my desktop-- and the internet was closed. It did not interrupt my work, but the sole vision of it prompted me to run this: Stop pop-up ads and adware in Safari - Apple Support, and that's how I found a stranger named "PremiereOpinion" hidden in two different places. One was a plugIn folder.

Next, I googled "PremiereOpinion".

In http://www.enigmasoftware.com/premieropinion-removal/ they suggested to check the Activity Monitor. It was there. I followed the simple steps and got rid of it. I also found the malware in Applications, in a huge folder.

It's been some 2 hours and so far so good. I hope I got rid of that crap and surely I learned my lesson. I'd appreciate if someone else have had a problem with "PremiereOpinion", and if he or she could provide more information about it. Maybe a different and faster way to remove it, or any suggestion.

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10), New hard drive

Posted on Oct 26, 2015 11:08 PM

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Answer 1

dominic23

Level 10

84,018 points

Nov 1, 2015 7:16 PM in response to manny772

For more info:

http://www.thesafemac.com/arg-premier-opinion/

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Answer 2

manny772 Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 27, 2015 1:11 PM in response to dominic23

Thank you dominic23.

Your link made me think about my browsers. I use Mozilla, Google & Safari. The Firefox Add-Ons kept a file of PremiereOpinion. I press REMOVE and nothing happen. Then I noticed, the REMOVE button was not available anymore. I then disabled the add-on and refreshed Firefox, and the REMOVE button was still unavailable. I went through several sites (unfortunately, I did not write them down to share here), and trashed and downloaded FIREFOX 5 times. The 5 times, the ADD-ON removal button of PremiereOpinion was unavailable. I tried several times the safe mode upload, refresh... everything.

I finally found the %$#@& malware in "Library/ Application Support/ Mozilla/ Extensions/ (ec803.... etc./ resources/ premiere opinion" I first got rid of that folder, restarted the Mac, and the %$#@& malware add-on still showed in Firefox, with no REMOVE button. Then I trashed the whole EXTENSIONS folder. Went into Firefox and in Troubleshooting I reached a segment to get rid of all ADD-ONS (which I have done before, without success).

I also found another %$#@& malware folder in "Library/ Application Support/ Google/Chrome/ External Extensions".

Then I trashed once again FIREFOX, downloaded a new one and reinstalled it for the 6th time. Problem solved.

I've been surfing the internet for a while and nothing is popping up, nothing is bothering me. It seem like I finally got rid of it for good, but being as meticulously bad-*** as it was (PremiereOpinion), I made a Genius Bar appointment so they can check if there is still traces of it in my Mac.

Bad experience, but the process solving taught me a lot.

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