Chitka

By JubileeX in Adware

Threat Scorecard

Ranking: 8,093
Threat Level: 20 % (Normal)
Infected Computers: 1,352
First Seen: March 18, 2013
Last Seen: September 14, 2023
OS(es) Affected: Windows

ScreenshotChitka displays annoying pop-up advertisements. Numerous computer users have reported annoying, intrusive behavior associated with Chitka. Chitka is not affiliated with Chitika, a legit advertising network. More importantly, Chitka can lead to further dangerous infections due to the fact that many of Chitka's advertisements contain malicious content that can lead computer users to attack websites or files containing Trojans.

One of the main ways criminals can monetize (that is, make money from) malware infections is by taking advantage of advertising opportunities and affiliate marketing techniques. Typically, legitimate websites can increase their traffic by paying marketers to go out and attract computer users. However, there are legitimate ways of doing this and marketing techniques that do not involve illegal practices. Criminals can increase the traffic to a particular website, advertisement or link by essentially forcing computer users to visit it repeatedly with a browser hijacker or by spamming the victim with pop-up windows containing the advertised content (as is the case with Chitka).

Regardless of the way criminals profit from these techniques, the result is that computer users will not be happy with having their online activity disrupted in this way. One typical pop-up window associated with Chitka that is particularly dangerous is one claiming that you need to update your Flash Player application. It is important to note that one of the most popular methods of distributing various types of Trojans is pretending to be Flash Player updates and installers, and this is no exception.

Regardless of discussions on whether Chitka is legitimate or not, it is clear that pop-up windows claiming to be associated with Chitka are being used to distribute malware. Security researchers have observed versions of the ZeroAccess rootkit, browser hijackers and several different Trojans being distribute in malicious links contained in these pop-ups. Because of this, these kinds of intrusive pop-ups should be considered as symptoms of a malware infection and treated as such. ESG security analysts advise the use of a fortified anti-malware application in order to remove all traces of Chitka-related malware from an infected computer.

URLs

Chitka may call the following URLs:

videomixable.ru

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