GShade Malware

Trojan
by Brandon Skies
February 7, 2023

GShade Malware

A popular shader/recolor program known as GShade has been exposed for packaging a malicious code in a recent update that would restart your computer if you were found to be using the program “incorrectly.” GShade Malware is a newly-reported virus program categorized as a Trojan horse that can remotely control your whole computer.

GShade Malware 1

In most cases, the victims of GShade Malware don’t find out about the ongoing infection of their computer for quite some time. Trojan horse viruses employ different techniques to stay hidden and avoid detection. For instance, as we said, GShade Malware could hijack certain system processes in your computer and use them as disguise so that when you see that a process in your Task Manager is consuming way too much RAM or CPU, you will ignore it because it looks like it is a legitimate system process. However, the truth would be that it is actually the Trojan using this system process to carry out its malicious tasks while, at the same time, avoiding getting detected. This is one of the reasons why Trojans like GShade Malware are oftentimes so hard to spot and intercept in time.

Another important factor that makes such threats rather difficult to stop before they complete their harmful tasks is that, when the Trojan is new, most antiviruses aren’t able to recognize it. This is due to the predominant use of database-detection as opposed to behavioral detection within pretty much all conventional antiviruses. While using their database to detect incoming threats is the more efficient and quicker way of spotting malware, its effectiveness is greatly decreased when a given threat is a new one and its details have not yet been added to the database.

In such cases, if the antivirus doesn’t have strong behavioral detection features, it will likely fail to spot the infection in time. Nowadays, more and more antiviruses have started implementing and perfecting their behavioral detection features – features that allow them to detect malware based on its behavioral pattern and not on its presence in the database. However, more time is needed before this method of malware detection becomes good enough to stop all Zero-Day attacks (Zero-Day attack – attack from a newly released virus that is not in the antiviruses’ databases).

With all this in mind, it should be clear why new infections like GShade Malware could be particularly harmful and difficult to stop and why your own vigilance is oftentimes your best tool against them.

SUMMARY:

NameGShade Malware
TypeTrojan
Danger Level High (Trojans are often used as a backdoor for Ransomware)
Symptoms Different forms of system instability as well as data corruption or deletion could be possible indicators of a Trojan horse attack.
Distribution Method Methods used to spread this type of malware include but are not limited to spam messages, pirated downloads, clickbait ads, and fake update requests.
Detection Tool

Please follow all the steps below in order to remove GShade Malware!

How to remove GShade Malware

  1. First, click the Start Menu on your Windows PC.
  2. Type Programs and Settings in the Start Menu, click the first item, and find GShade Malware in the programs list that would show up.
  3. Select GShade Malware from the list and click on Uninstall.
  4. Follow the steps in the removal wizard.

What we suggest you do first is, check the list of programs that are presently installed on the infected device and uninstall any rogue software that you find there:

  • From the Start Menu, navigate to Control Panel ->>> Programs and Features ->>> Uninstall a Program.
  • Next, carefully search for unfamiliar programs or programs that have been installed recently and could be related to GShade Malware.
  • If you find any of the programs suspicious then uninstall them if they turn out to be linked to GShade Malware.
  • If a notification appears on your screen when you try to uninstall a specific questionable program prompting you to just alter it or repair it, make sure you choose NO and complete the steps from the removal wizard.

Remove GShade Malware from Chrome

  1. Click on the three dots in the right upper corner
  2. Go to more tools
  3. Now select extensions
  4. Remove the GShade Malware extension
  • Once you open Chrome, click on the three-dots icon to open the browser’s menu, go to More Tools/ More Options, and then to Extensions.
  • Again, find the items on that page that could be linked to GShade Malware and/or that might be causing problems in the browser and delete them.
  • Afterwards, go to this folder: Computer > C: > Users > *Your User Account* > App Data > Local > Google > Chrome > User Data. In there, you will find a folder named Default – you should change its name to Backup Default and restart the PC.
  • Note that the App Data folder is normally hidden so you’d have to first make the hidden files and folders on your PC visible before you can access it.

How to get rid of GShade Malware on FF/Edge/etc.

  1. Open the browser and select the menu icon.
  2. From the menu, click on the Add-ons button.
  3. Look for the GShade Malware extension
  4. Get rid of GShade Malware by removing it from extensions

If using Firefox:

  • Open Firefox
  • Select the three parallel lines menu and go to Add-ons.
  • Find the unwanted add-on and delete it from the browser – if there is more than one unwanted extension, remove all of them.
  • Go to the browser menu again, select Options, and then click on Home from the sidebar to the left.
  • Check the current addresses for the browser’s homepage and new-tab page and change them if they are currently set to address(es) you don’t know or trust.

If using MS Edge/IE:

  • Start Edge
  • Select the browser menu and go to Extensions.
  • Find and uninstall any Edge extensions that look undesirable and unwanted.
  • Select Settings from the browser menu and click on Appearance.
  • Check the new-tab page address of the browser and if it has been modified by “GShade Malware” or another unwanted app, change it to an address that you’d want to be the browser’s new-tab page.

How to Delete GShade Malware

  1. Open task manager
  2. Look for the GShade Malware process
  3. Select it and click on End task
  4. Open the file location to delete GShade Malware
  • Access the Task Manager by pressing together the Ctrl + Alt + Del keys and then selecting Task Manager.
  • Open Processes and there try to find a process with the name of the unwanted software. If you find it, select it with the right button of the mouse and click on the Open File Location option.
  • If you don’t see a “GShade Malware” process in the Task Manager, look for another suspicious process with an unusual name. It is likely that the unwanted process would be using lots of RAM and CPU so pay attention to the number of resources each process is using.
  • Tip: If you think you have singled out the unwanted process but are not sure, it’s always a good idea to search for information about it on the Internet – this should give you a general idea if the process is a legitimate one from a regular program or from your OS or if it is indeed likely linked to the adware.
  • If you find another suspicious process, open its File Location too.
  • Once in the File Location folder for the suspicious process, start testing all of the files that are stored there by dragging them to our free online scanner available below.
  • Each file will be scanned with up to 64 antivirus programs to ensure maximum accuracy
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    • If the scanner finds malware in any of the files, return to the Processes tab in the Task Manager, select the suspected process, and then select the End Process option to quit it.
    • Go back to the folder where the files of that process are located and delete all of the files that you are allowed to delete. If all files get deleted normally, exit the folder and delete that folder too. If one or more of the files showed an error message when you tried to delete them, leave them for now and return to try to delete them again once you’ve completed the rest of the guide.

    How to Uninstall GShade Malware

    1. Click on the home button
    2. Search for Startup Apps
    3. Look for GShade Malware in there
    4. Uninstall GShade Malware from Startup Apps by turning it off
    • Now you need to carefully search for and uninstall any GShade Malware-related entries from the Registry. The easiest way to do this is to open the Registry Editor app (type Regedit in the windows search field and press Enter) and then open a Find dialog (CTRL+F key combination) where you have to type the name of the threat. 
    • Perform a search by clicking on the Find Next button and delete any detected results. Do this as many times as needed until no more results are found. 
    • After that, to ensure that there are no remaining entries lined to GShade Malware in the Registry, go manually to the following directories and delete them:
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Random Directory. 
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run/Random
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Internet Explorer/Main/Random

    How can this threat harm you?


    Espionage and theft of sensitive information are two malicious tasks oftentimes associated with Trojans like GShade Malware and SvcUpdater.exe. However, there are many other different ways in which a virus like this one could be employed. For example, some Trojans are effectively used as distribution agents for other forms of malware, including specialized spyware infections and ransomware cryptoviruses.
    In addition to that, GShade Malware may also be able to force your machine to use all of its RAM and CPU while you aren’t using the machine to secretly mine cryptocurrency for the hackers that control it. Other uses of this threat are also possible. No matter the way the virus is utilized, however, one thing is for certain and that is you must make sure to remove the threat ASAP before it has caused any irreparable damage to your system or virtual privacy.


    About the author

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    Brandon Skies

    Brandon is a researcher and content creator in the fields of cyber-security and virtual privacy. Years of experience enable him to provide readers with important information and adequate solutions for the latest software and malware problems.

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