Monday 13 April 2015

Remove Saleplus malware completely without any anti-malware

SalePlus
SalePlus adware
Recently my laptop got infected by the Saleplus adware/malware from a website. Symptoms are :
1. You see ads on every page you visit even when you have the Adblock Plus installed.
SalePlus ads
SalePlus ads

Saleplus adblock
SalePlus ads even with adblock plus enabled

2. Biased Google search results.
SalePlus google
Expected search results
Saleplus google
Search results altered by SalePlus


3. Slow internet speed.

In my case, only Google chrome was the affected browser. Hence following are the steps to remove it from Google chrome and Windows only. ...

How to get rid of it.....
  1. Uninstall SalePlus from Windows installed Program and features.
    To achieve this in windows 7, press windows button --> Control Panel --> Programs --> Uninstall a Program. After that find "SalePlus" and uninstall it. For other windows versions, steps are almost similar.
  2. Remove it from startup of WIndows.
    Press windows button and type "msconfig", hit enter.
    Goto the Startup and look for suspicious entries. Generally the adware takes the name of whatever file you were trying to download from the infected website. e.g. in my case it was "Eluveitie - The Call of the Mountains".
    Disable such suspicious startup programs. Do not close the window yet.
    Saleplus startup
    Remove SalePlus from startup

    1. Delete its files and folders
      Have a look at its location in the same table in msconfig (previous step) and go to that location i.e. go to "C:\Users\code\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\Eluveitie - The Call of the Mountains".
      Right click on the shortcut "Eluveitie - The Call of the Mountains" ---> properties.
      Note down the value in target field and go to that address. e.g. go to "C:\ProgramData\{82d33535-da55-b0aa-82d3-33535da5d4d7}" and delete "{82d33535-da55-b0aa-82d3-33535da5d4d7}" from C:\ProgramData. Also delete the shortcut you found earlier at "C:\Users\code\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\Eluveitie - The Call of the Mountains".
    2. Delete C:\ProgramData\4288546593436265821 (or similar folder with date modified same as other two folders in step 2 and step 3.)
    3. Remove the SalePlus extension from Google Chrome.
      Visit chrome://extensions/ (just paste this in chrome address bar)  and enable developer mode.
      Search for SSalePlus and check the "Loaded from: " attribute of the extension. This is the address which allows it to rise from ashes even when you delete the extension from chrome. In my case it is located at C:\ProgramData\ambmpnbogdlmjcmpeejljnhbnmojogeh.
      Delete this directory "ambmpnbogdlmjcmpeejljnhbnmojogeh".
      Also disable and and remove the extension from Google chrome.
      Saleplus chrome
      Saleplus chrome extension

    4. Now close msconfig window from step 2 and restart.
    Now the annoying ads must be gone. All the best.
    Tried on : Windows 7, Google chrome Version 41.0.2272.118 dev-m
    May also work for : Any version of windows, Other browsers

    Tuesday 7 April 2015

    5 important steps to optimize the speed of your Wordpress website


    I am a Wordpress developer. I tried to optimize the speed of my Wordpress website. After hours of searching i found solutions but most of them didn't work for me. Then i thought, why not try combining some of the working solutions?.. I must tell, the website i was working on was created on Genesis Framework which is the fastest among all the themes we generally use for our websites.
    I will share how i optimized the speed of my Wordpress website.
    Let us jump to the steps without wasting much of your precious time.

    1. Reduce the size of all your images by compressing them, you'll get some online image compressors. Replace .png images with .jpg if possible because a png image increases the server response time which leads to slow pages. One of the online image compressors is :
    http://compresspng.com/

    2. Try and use minimum javaScript in your website. If you have to use js anyway, put all your js in footer after </body> tag because web pages use top to bottom approach, else it loads the js first and then the content, due to which none of the above-the-fold content(html) on your page may be rendered.
    You can also call your js asynchronously by using async (suggested by google's pagespeed insights ).
    Most of us do not know what exactly calling the js "asynchronously" means. Well according to what i understood after applying async is that your js will load along with your page but it will not block the above-the-fold content.

    3.Try and use background colors instead of images.

    4. Add this code to your .htacess file
    # BEGIN Compress text files
    <ifModule mod_deflate.c>
      AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/xml text/css text/plain
      AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml application/xhtml+xml application/xml
      AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rdf+xml application/rss+xml application/atom+xml
      AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript application/javascript application/x-javascript application/json
      AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf application/x-font-otf
      AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/truetype font/opentype
    </ifModule>
    # END Compress text files
    # BEGIN Expire headers
    <ifModule mod_expires.c>
      ExpiresActive On
      ExpiresDefault "access plus 300 seconds"
      ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 2592000 seconds"
      ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 2592000 seconds"
      ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 2592000 seconds"
      ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 2592000 seconds"
      ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 2592000 seconds"
      ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 604800 seconds"
      ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
      ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
      ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
      ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 600 seconds"
      ExpiresByType application/xhtml+xml "access plus 600 seconds"
    </ifModule>
    # END Expire headers
    # BEGIN Cache-Control Headers
    <ifModule mod_headers.c>
      <filesMatch ".(ico|jpe?g|png|gif|swf)$">
        Header set Cache-Control "public"
      </filesMatch>
      <filesMatch ".(css)$">
        Header set Cache-Control "public"
      </filesMatch>
      <filesMatch ".(js)$">
        Header set Cache-Control "private"
      </filesMatch>
      <filesMatch ".(x?html?|php)$">
        Header set Cache-Control "private, must-revalidate"
      </filesMatch>
    </ifModule>
    # END Cache-Control Headers
    # BEGIN Turn ETags Off
    FileETag None
    # END Turn ETags Off# Leverage Browser Caching Ninja -- Starts here
    # Do not write anything between "Leverage Browser Caching Ninja -- Starts" and "Leverage Browser Caching Ninja -- Ends"
    # It will be deleted while uninstalling Leverage Browser Caching Ninja plugin
    <IfModule mod_expires.c>
    ExpiresActive On
    ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 month"
    ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 year"
    ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 month"
    ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 month"
    ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 month"
    ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
    ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 month"
    ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 year"
    </IfModule>
    # Leverage Browser Caching Ninja -- Ends here
    The above code will do the following :
    i) Compress text files
    ii) Enable Cache control headers
    iii) Enable Expire Headers
    iv) Enable Leverage Browser caching Ninja

    5. If you still do not get the desired speed, you may want to minify your css and js as suggested by google page speed insights.
    These five steps got me an optimized website :). Good luck for yours....

    Tried on : Wordpress 4.1
    May work on : Any other Wordpress version

    Google+

    Featured Post

    PHP EmailMessage class for extracting attachments

    Hi, recently I had to create a php program which fetches emails with attachments (including inline). I searched a lot and succeeded with h...