How to uninstall Mulkey from Mac (Malware removal guide)

What is Mulkey

According to security researchers, Mulkey is a malicious applications that belongs to the Adware category . Adware is short for ‘ad supported’ software. Additionally, some malware contains adware or behaves similarly to adware. The Mulkey adware displays unwanted ads that appear in unclosable windows or in-text links on browser. In order to show unwanted ads as often as possible it can modify your web browser settings. You may even find that your Mac settings are changed without your permission. The makers of the adware software do so in order to earn revenue via third-party ad network. Thus every your click on the advertisements generates revenue for them.

Another reason why you need to remove the Mulkey malware is its online data-tracking activity. It can be used to collect a wide variety of your user information (your ip address, what is a web-site you are viewing now, what you are looking for on the Internet, which links you are clicking), which can later transfer to third parties.

To find out how to remove Mulkey adware, we recommend to read the step-by-step guidance added to this article below. The tutorial was developed by experienced security specialists who discovered a method to delete the adware software out of the MAC OS.

How does Mulkey get on your MAC

Usually, adware gets into your MAC as part of a bundle with freeware, sharing files and other unsafe applications that you downloaded from the Internet. The creators of adware software pays software creators for distributing adware within their programs. So, additional software is often included as part of the installer. In order to avoid the installation of any adware software: choose only Manual, Custom or Advanced setup mode and reject all third-party programs in which you are unsure.

Threat Summary

Name	Mulkey, Mulkeyd
Type	adware, PUP (potentially unwanted program), Mac malware, Mac virus
Detection Names	Osx.Adware.Cimpli, MacOS.Agent-MT, OSX.Trojan.Gen, Program:MacOS/Vigram.A, Adware/Adload!OSX, Adware.MAC.Generic, ApplicUnwnt and Trojan-Downloader.OSX.Adload
Distribution	Free software installers, suspicious popup ads, torrent downloads and fake software updaters
Symptoms	Every time you perform an Internet search, your web browser is redirected to another web site, advertising pop ups won’t go away, unwanted application installed without your knowledge, an unwanted toolbar appears in your browser, your web-browser start page has changed and you cannot change it back, slow Internet browsing speeds.
Removal	Mulkey removal guide

How to remove Mulkey adware

As with deleting adware software, malicious software or potentially unwanted programs, there are few steps you can do. We suggest trying them all. If you do only one part of the tutorial, then it should be use malicious software removal tool, because it should remove adware software and block any further infection. But to completely remove Mulkey adware you’ll have to at least reset your browser settings to default state, delete all unwanted and suspicious apps, and scan your MAC with malware removal utilities. Some of the steps below will require you to close this web-site. So, please read the few simple steps carefully, after that bookmark it or open it on your smartphone for later reference.

To remove Mulkey, complete the following steps:

1. Remove profiles created by Mulkey
2. Delete Mulkey associated software by using the Finder
3. Remove Mulkey related files and folders
4. Scan your Mac with MalwareBytes
5. Remove Mulkey from Safari, Chrome, Firefox
6. How to stay safe online

Remove profiles created by Mulkey

Mulkey can install a configuration profile on the Mac system to block changes made to the browser settings. Therefore, you need to open system preferences, find and delete the profile installed by the adware software.

Click Apple menu ( ) > System Preferences.

In System Preferences, select Profiles. if there is no Profiles in the list of preferences, that means there are no profiles installed on the Mac. If there is Profiles in the list, then click on it, then select a profile related to Mulkey.

To delete a malicious profile, click on the minus button ( – ) located at the bottom-left of the Profiles screen.

Delete Mulkey associated software by using the Finder

Check the list of installed programs on your Mac device and uninstall all unknown and recently installed applications. If you see an unknown program with incorrect spelling or varying capital letters, it have most likely been installed by malware and you should clean it off first with malware removal tool like MalwareBytes AntiMalware (MBAM).

Make sure you have closed all web-browsers and other software. Next, delete any unknown and suspicious programs from computer using the Finder.

Open Finder and click “Applications”.

Look around the entire list of software installed on your computer. Most probably, one of them is the Mulkey adware. Choose the questionable application or the application that name is not familiar to you and remove it.

Drag the questionable program from the Applications folder to the Trash.

Most important, don’t forget, choose Finder -> Empty Trash.

Remove Mulkey related files and folders

Now you need to try to find Mulkey related files and folders, and then delete them manually. You need to look for these files in certain directories. To quickly open them, we recommend using the “Go to Folder…” command.

Mulkey creates several files, these files must be found and removed. Below is a list of files associated with this unwanted program.

• /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.Mulkeyd.plist
• ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.Mulkey.plist
• ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.VersionCheck.plist
• /Library/Application Support/.(RANDOM)/System/com.Mulkey.system
• ~/Library/Application Support/.(RANDOM)/Services/com.Mulkey.service.app

Some files created by Mulkey are hidden from the user. To find and delete them, you need to enable “show hidden files”. To do this, use the shortcut CMD + SHIFT + . Press once to show hidden files and again to hide them. There is another way. Click Finder -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal. In Terminal, paste the following text: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

Press Enter. Hold the ‘Option/alt’ key, then right click on the Finder icon in the dock and click Relaunch.

Click on the Finder icon. From the menu bar, select Go and click “Go to Folder…”. As a result, a small window opens that allows you to quickly open a specific directory.

Check for Mulkey generated files in the /Library/LaunchAgents folder

In the “Go to Folder…” window, type the following text and press Go:
/Library/LaunchAgents

This will open the contents of the “/Library/LaunchAgents” folder. Look carefully at it and pay special attention to recently created files, as well as files that have a suspicious name. Move all suspicious files to the Trash. A few examples of files: com.net-preferences.plist, installapp.plist, com.Mulkey.service.plist, com.google.defaultsearch.plist, , com.machelper.plist, macsearch.plist and search.plist. Most often, adware, potentially unwanted programs and browser hijackers create several files with similar names.

Check for Mulkey generated files in the /Library/Application Support folder

In the “Go to Folder…” window, type the following text and press Go:
/Library/Application Support

This will open the contents of the “Application Support” folder. Look carefully at its contents, pay special attention to recently added/changed folders and files. Check the contents of suspicious folders, if there is a file with a name similar to com.Mulkey.system, then this folder must be deleted. Move all suspicious folders and files to the Trash.

Check for Mulkey generated files in the “~/Library/LaunchAgents” folder

In the “Go to Folder…” window, type the following text and press Go:
~/Library/LaunchAgents

Proceed in the same way as with the “/Library/LaunchAgents” and “/Library/Application Support” folders. Look for suspicious and recently added files. Move all suspicious files to the Trash.

Check for Mulkey generated files in the /Library/LaunchDaemons folder

In the “Go to Folder…” window, type the following text and press Go:
/Library/LaunchDaemons

Carefully browse the entire list of files and pay special attention to recently created files, as well as files that have a suspicious name. Move all suspicious files to the Trash. A few examples of files to be deleted: com.Mulkey.plist, com.macsearch.system.plist, com.installapp.system.plist, com.machelper.system.plist and com.search.system.plist. In most cases, adware software, browser hijackers and PUPs create several files with similar names.

Scan your Mac with MalwareBytes

Manual Mulkey removal requires some computer skills. Some files and system entries that created by the adware may be not fully removed. We advise that run MalwareBytes Free to scan the Mac computer. Moreover, this program will help you to get rid of adware, PUPs, browser hijackers and toolbars that your Apple Mac can be affected too.

Click the following link to download MalwareBytes Anti Malware.

After the download is done, run it and follow the prompts. Click the “Scan” button to perform a system scan with this tool for the Mulkey malware. Depending on your MAC, the scan can take anywhere from a few minutes to close to an hour. You may delete threats (move to Quarantine) by simply click the “Quarantine” button.

MalwareBytes is a free malware removal tool that you can use to delete all detected folders, files, malicious services and so on.

Remove Mulkey from Safari, Chrome, Firefox

If you have ‘Mulkey adware’ removal problem, then remove unwanted extensions can help you. In the steps below we will show you the method to delete malicious addons without reinstall. This will also help to get rid of Mulkey from your internet browser.

Google Chrome	Mozilla Firefox
In the top right hand corner, click on ‘three vertical dots’, and this will open up the main menu on Google Chrome. When the drop-down menu appears, select ‘More tools’ and click on ‘Extensions’. Click ‘Remove’ to uninstall an extension. Click ‘Remove’ in the dialog box. You can also try to delete Mulkey adware by reset Chrome settings.	Click on ‘menu’ button and select ‘Add-ons’. Go to ‘Extensions’ tab. To uninstall an add-on, click on ‘Remove’ button next to it. If you are still experiencing problems with Mulkey removal, you need to reset Firefox browser.
Safari
On the top menu select ‘Safari’, then ‘Preferences’. Select ‘Extensions’ tab. Select an extension you want to delete and click ‘Uninstall’ button next to it.

How to stay safe online

To put it simply, you need to use an ad-blocker utility (AdGuard, for example). It’ll block and protect you from malicious web sites, unwanted ads and popups. To be able to do that, the ad-blocking application uses a list of filters. Each filter is a rule that describes a malicious web page, an advertising content, a banner and others. The ad-blocking program automatically uses these filters, depending on the web-pages you are visiting.

1. Download AdGuard by clicking on the link below.
   
   

   AdGuard for Mac download
   3686 downloads
   Author: © Adguard
   Category: Security tools
   Update: January 17, 2018
   
2. Once the downloading process is finished, start the downloaded file. You will see the “Setup Wizard” program window. Follow the prompts.
3. After the installation is done, press “Skip” to close the setup program and use the default settings, or click “Get Started” to see an quick tutorial that will allow you get to know AdGuard better.
4. In most cases, the default settings are enough and you don’t need to change anything. Each time, when you run your computer, AdGuard will run automatically and stop annoying advertisements, block malicious and misleading webpages.

To sum up

Once you’ve finished the step-by-step guide outlined above, your MAC should be clean from Mulkey and other malicious software. The Firefox, Safari and Chrome will no longer redirect you to various unwanted web sites and online ads. Unfortunately, if the instructions does not help you, then you have caught a new adware software, and then the best way – ask for help here.