Hijacked by Safe Search?

2013 Air
Mountain Lion, up to date
Firefox 24.0

Suddenly, beginning this morning in fact, any search term that I type into the URL field no longer goes to Google, but to a Norton Safe Search. Searching, using the real search field, gives lots of hits for this, but all seem to be about the default search engine being reselected by some drive by javascript. Mine still has the google G, so that didn't happen.

In my case, this is a locked down laptop that gets nothing added automatically, including Apple updates. And I have installed nothing for a couple of months and certainly nothing between yesterday and this morning.

A test with Safari and Chrome show a normal google search. It is Firefox that got changed somehow. The About shows FF to still be version 24.0. Except for NoScript I have no addons.

Again, the search field still shows google, but I can find no option in preference that addresses the auto search feature in the URL field. I think I can be fairly certain that google didn't get bought out by Norton, so something changed.

Anybody else have the problem?

No...

Do you have the "Ask" toolbar (provided by ask.com) or any other toolbar?
That toolbar uses NSS and who knows what other toolbar may be using it.

Need to look at your extensions, plug-ins and services.

Suggest you try removing the NoScript Security suite to see if it goes away.

bobtomay said:

No...

Do you have the "Ask" toolbar (provided by ask.com) or any other toolbar?
That toolbar uses NSS and who knows what other toolbar may be using it.

Need to look at your extensions, plug-ins and services.

Suggest you try removing the NoScript Security suite to see if it goes away.

Click to expand...

No. I would never install a toolbar of any kind. Plus, starting FF in safe mode still gets the problem. I thought it might be a DNS issue since I am in an Internet cafe, but if that was the case then Chrome and Safari should get hijacked and they don't. Nothing else is installed in FF. Since I am usually in an unsecure location, I have it pretty well locked down with Little Snitch and seldom give permission to anything I don't know about.

Going to flush FF and get a new load when I get to my own network.

Does this happen at home?

Never mind. It is the wireless cafe, or their provider. Some of the other patrons in the place got the same thing, but only with Firefox and it didn't matter if it was a Mac or a PC. Opera, Chrome, Safari and IE worked normally.

Actually, where FF was going was ask.com, and into a Norton Safe Search page. DNS interception, I assume, but I have no idea why it only affects one browser.

Got home on my network and FF also worked properly.