Short Answer:

Delete the .JSON file at

C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\AC\#!001\Microsoft\F12\debugger\settings.json(1)

Elaboration:

How often it is when you are browsing through your beloved Web Browser and some suspicious ads start popping up on the screen?

Many a times your home page is not the one which you have been using since forever and it appears someone has hijacked your browser.

How will you get rid of this Virus/Adware? – a question that may seem easy to answer at first but has many hidden layers to it.

We often term unknown software changes on our computers as viruses. This terminology has become an urban slang nowadays and verily unwanted adware come under this category.

They are termed as Potentially Unwanted Programs or P.U.P.s which run in the background and mess with other programs that you use.

Your computer may contract these malware through a number of means, most common of which are:

Opening an e-mail with trojan virus files

Downloading software from un-verified sources. These software files may be embedded with malware programs.

Browsing un-safe websites like Forums, Porn websites, etc.

Downloading torrents and exposing your IP to hackers.

Although what many tech gurus may say, these virus’ are very difficult to get rid off without any paid Anti-Virus subscriptions. On top of this some of the new Virus’ may not be detectable even after shelling out a hefty subscription fee to the antivirus companies.

Hence, it is necessary to have a basic knowledge of how Virus’s in particular – Adware (which are the most common) work.

To elaborate I present a case study of an adware that troubled me for days on end.

I have a Windows 10 running on Dell XPS 15 7000 gaming series machine with i7 Kaby Lake 7700Hq processor coupled with 16gb RAM and NVIDIA GeoForce GTX 1050Ti graphics card, 128GB SSD and 1TB HDD.

Working on my Microsoft Edge which is my most preferred browser (belligerent to popular opinion), I noticed that a different search engine opens when I search through the Browser URL input form.

The name “search60.com” itself suggested that this was work of a malware.

If you are a regular internet user, you Google on how to remove such virus and download free trial versions of

AVG Antivirus

McAfee Virus Protect

Zemana AntiMalware,

MalwareBytes,

HitmanPro

AdwCleaner

CCleaner

Even if they found many unwanted malicious files and quarantined or deleted them the search remained the same.

What was the most puzzling was that even after ensuring that the search provider in the search engine settings of Microsoft Edge was properly set as google.com

Still, when I searched from the URL input, it showed search60.com which is a Google Custom Search.

Deleting Cache, Cookies and History should help in usual cases but didn’t help here.

Even after I deleted Microsoft Edge and re-installed it through a PowerShell command, this search malware remained.

This irritates you so much that resolving such an issue becomes your primary objective.

Eureka Moment:

On further digging and searching throughout the entire C: drive I found that there was a suspicious settings.JSON file containing redirects to the search60.com webpage.

C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\AC\#!001\Microsoft\F12\debugger\settings.json(1)

Making sure that there wasn’t any code written that could affect the Browser or any System Dependencies – Delete this JSON file.

No need to reboot the system, no need to clear browser data.

Congratulations, your Microsoft Edge browser now searches with your default search engine, as it was intended to.

File Location:

C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe\AC\#!001\Microsoft\F12\debugger\settings.json(1)

JSON data:

{“0”:{“JavaScriptDebuggerSettings”:{“showLibraryFrames”:false,”showAsyncFrames”:true,”DebuggerExceptionFilter”:”0″},”JavaScriptDebuggerData”:{“resourceDisplayData”:[{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/bootstrap.min.css?v=2.9.428-304-g30dd0fc8″,”prettyPrintEnabled”:false,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/css/bricks.css?v=2.9.428-304-g30dd0fc8″,”prettyPrintEnabled”:false},{“key”:”http://search60.com/templates/generic-search-2017/css/style.css?v=2.9.428-304-g30dd0fc8″,”prettyPrintEnabled”:false},{“key”:”http://search60.com/css/base-2017/framework.css?v=2.9.428-304-g30dd0fc8″,”prettyPrintEnabled”:false},{“key”:”https://www.google.com/uds/api/search/1.0/bb73d6800fca299b36665ebff4d01037/default+en.css”,”prettyPrintEnabled”:false},{“key”:”http://search60.com/css/google-cse.css?v=2.9.428-304-g30dd0fc8″,”prettyPrintEnabled”:false},{“key”:”http://search60.com/search/?ac=2471749439&q=ebt”,”prettyPrintEnabled”:false},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/normalize.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/print.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/bootstrap.css”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/dist/css/bootstrap.css”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/glyphicons.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/scaffolding.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/vendor-prefixes.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/tab-focus.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/image.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/type.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/text-emphasis.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/background-variant.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/text-overflow.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/code.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/grid.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/grid.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/grid-framework.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/tables.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/table-row.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/forms.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/forms.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/buttons.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/buttons.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/opacity.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/component-animations.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/dropdowns.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/nav-divider.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/reset-filter.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/button-groups.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/border-radius.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/input-groups.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/navs.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/navbar.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/nav-vertical-align.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/utilities.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/breadcrumbs.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/pagination.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/pagination.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/pager.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/labels.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/labels.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/badges.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/jumbotron.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/thumbnails.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/alerts.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/alerts.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/progress-bars.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/gradients.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/progress-bar.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/media.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/list-group.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/list-group.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/panels.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/panels.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/responsive-embed.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/wells.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/close.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/modals.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/tooltip.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/reset-text.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/popovers.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/carousel.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/clearfix.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/center-block.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/hide-text.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/responsive-utilities.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://search60.com/lib/bootstrap-3.3.7/css/less/mixins/responsive-visibility.less”,”sourceMapEnabled”:true},{“key”:”http://www.google.com/cse/static/style/look/v2/default.css”,”prettyPrintEnabled”:false}],”openResources”:[{“key”:”http://search60.com/search/?ac=2471749439&q=ebt”}],”watches”:[]}},”1″:{}}