I wrote this article to help you remove Hihikal.ru Virus. This Hihikal.ru Virus removal guide works for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The Hihikal.ru platform functions as a search engine and a news portal. The website will keep you up to date with the important events from across the globe. Apart from the stream of articles, Hihikal.ru provides other information. It shows the current date, displays a weather report and lists the exchange rates for dollars and euros into rubles. Another feature is a horoscope. As evidenced by the language settings and the geographic options, the platform is directed at users from Russia. You could get the impression that Hihikal.ru is a good service provider. We need to warn you that the website involves risks. There is a significant amount of evidence to confirm that the domain is connected to a browser hijacker. The rogue program poses risks to users’ computers and their personal security.

If you have never visited Hihikal.ru, do not be surprised to find it set as your homepage and default search provider. These changes can be made without your involvement. The hijacker appends them because the domain serves a purpose. The custom settings are enforced. You will be unable to revert back to your preferred values. The hijacker will reset your browser every time you attempt to make changes. Hihikal.ru returns supported results. This is the main activity on the agenda of the hijacker.

When landing on Hihikal.ru, you will notice that the website embeds advertisements. This is just a sample of the content you will be flooded with once the hijacker takes over. The insidious program generates pesky ads on a constant basis. This is not only distracting, but it slows down the affected computer. The task of producing the windows uses up a lot of CPU and RAM memory. As a result, your system’s performance will degrade. It will stall, freeze and even crash at times. The Hihikal.ru hijacker displays ads in order to raise proceeds. They contain redirect links to sponsored platforms. Each time a user follows a link, a certain sum is paid for successfully promoting the corresponding domain.

The advertisements come in different formats. You can expect to see banners, coupon boxes, in-text links, freebies, contextual, interstitial, transitional, floating, inline and comparison ads. They show bargain deals for a wide variety of commodities. This encompasses clothes, technological devices, furniture, accessories, sports gear, books, games, toys, gardening equipment, decorations and other items. To make the content more noticeable, the Hihikal.ru hijacker decorates the ad windows with colorful patterns, cursive fonts, flash animations and other special effects. You should not allow the cheap tricks to cloud your better judgment. The sources for the ads are not confirmed to be reliable. They could lead to dangerous websites.

Another malicious task the Hihikal.ru hijacker performs is to monitor users’ browsing sessions. The nefarious program will record your history, keystrokes, tracking cookies, IP address, email account, geographic location, zip code, home address, telephone number, fax, demographic details and login credentials. The hijacker will sort the gathered information into catalogs which will be traded on the darknet. The owners of the secluded program do not ask people for permission to collect input from their browser, let alone sell it.

As we alluded to earlier, the hijacker behind Hihikal.ru is not spread through the actual website. You can contact the malevolent program without visiting the domain. There are two distribution patterns. The first is bundling. The hijacker can get merged with another program. The possible hosts include pirated utilities, freeware and shareware applications. The download client will offer you to have an additional tool installed. If you skip reading the terms and conditions while running the wizard, the hijacker will be given access to your machine. Make sure you are familiar with the end user license agreement (EULA) of the programs you add to your system.

The other way in for the Hihikal.ru hijacker is through a spam email. This technique also involves a host. Rather than a program, the role of the host is assumed by a file. The sender will attach it to the email and describe it as an important document. In many cases, spam is written on behalf of reliable entities, like national posts, courier firms, banks, institutions, government branches, social networks and others. To tell whether a given message is legitimate, look up the available contacts. An official representative of a given organization would use an internal account to correspond with people. You can visit the entity’s official website for reference.

Hihikal.ru Virus Removal

Before starting the real removal process, you must reboot in Safe Mode. If you know how to do this, skip the instructions below and proceed to Step 2. If you do not know how to do it, here is how to reboot in Safe mode:

For Windows 98, XP, Millenium and 7:
Reboot your computer. When the first screen of information appears, start repeatedly pressing F8 key. Then choose Safe Mode With Networking from the options.

For Windows 8/8.1
Click the Start button, next click Control Panel —> System and Security —> Administrative Tools —> System Configuration.‌

Check the Safe Boot option and click OK. Click Restart when asked.
For Windows 10
Open the Start menu and click or tap on the Power button.

While keeping the Shift key pressed, click or tap on Restart.

Please, follow the steps precisely to remove Hihikal.ru Virus from the browser:

Remove From Mozilla Firefox:

Open Firefox, click on top-right corner , click Add-ons, hit Extensions next.

Look for suspicious or unknown extensions, remove them all.

Remove From Chrome:

Open Chrome, click chrome menu icon at the top-right corner —>More Tools —> Extensions. There, identify the malware and select chrome-trash-icon(Remove).

Remove From Internet Explorer:
Open IE, then click IE gear icon on the top-right corner —> Manage Add-ons.

Find the malicious add-on. Remove it by pressing Disable.

Right click on the browser’s shortcut, then click Properties. Remove everything after the .exe” in the Target box.

Open Control Panel by holding the Win Key and R together. Write appwiz.cpl in the field, then click OK.

Here, find any program you had no intention to install and uninstall it.

Run the Task Manager by right clicking on the Taskbar and choosing Start Task Manager.

Look carefully at the file names and descriptions of the running processes. If you find any suspicious one, search on Google for its name, or contact me directly to identify it. If you find a malware process, right-click on it and choose End task.

Open MS Config by holding the Win Key and R together. Type msconfig and hit Enter.

Go in the Startup tab and Uncheck entries that have “Unknown” as Manufacturer.

Still can not remove Hihikal.ru Virus from your browser? Please, leave a comment below, describing what steps you performed. I will answer promptly.