Windows – how to remove a Proxy Virus (127.0.0.1:8080) from windows 10

network-adapterPROXYproxy-serverwindowswindows 10

it seems that my proxy is always active. If I disable manual proxy configuration it turns on again. I've tried to delete some registry keys but the same keys appear again.

Here is the screenshot of Proxy Settings:

Proxy Settings

Here is the screenshot of Internet Option settings. In Connection tab Lan Settings Button is disabled.

Here is the regedit settings i've changed: 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings
MigrateProxy
ProxyEnable (which is always set to 0)
ProxyHttp1.1 (which is always set to 0)
ProxyOverride (<-loopback>)
ProxyServer (which has the 127.0.0.1:8080 IP & currently I've deleted it)

Thanks for helping.

Best Answer

I assume you have run a full scan of your computer, and something like Malwarebytes?

Before you can clean up the proxy settings, you must remove the malware that is causing it.

  • Start an elevated command prompt
  • Run netstat -abno | findstr LISTENING | findstr :8080 and take a note of the last number on the displayed line. That is the PID of the process listening on that port.
  • Run task manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and go to the Details tab. Find the process with the corresponding PID.
  • Right-click on the process you found and choose "Open file location".
  • Still in task manager, make sure the process is selected and click on "End task" to kill it.
  • Now delete the file that the process belonged to (explorer should have popped up with the file selected when you pressed "Open file location" earlier.
  • Now clean up the proxy settings

Some additional thoughts:

  • If the malware is more advanced, it might have a watchdog process that launches the proxy as soon as you kill it. A good way of detecting the watchdog is to use Process Monitor to see what the parent process is. You can also right-click on the processes and suspend them, so they are running, but unable to do anything.
  • The only 99% secure way of cleaning a computer from malware is to reinstall it. (there are some malware that infects the BIOS/UEFI, but that is unlikely here)
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