Information Security: Malware Analysis Researchers do Add VirusTotal as search engine in Chrome and save time

Why to add VirusTotal.com as custom search engine ?

While conducting an analysis of a malware family, I found it has become my routine to open an extensive number of tabs on the online malware scanning platform, VirusTotal.com. However, I find it rather time-consuming to repeatedly navigate to VirusTotal, wait for the main page to load, and then search for the hash. The address bar in Google Chrome can serve as a convenient tool for conducting rapid searches. During my investigation, I delved into the possibility of utilizing VirusTotal as a search engine. The current configuration of the search engine list within the Chrome browser is inherently restricted to exclusively encompass some of the web search engines. Below, I will outline the necessary steps to incorporate VirusTotal.com into the default search engine list within the Chrome browser. This will enable you to efficiently search for content on VirusTotal.com.

Steps to Add VirusTotal.com as Search Engine

Here are steps to add custom search engine which will search query in VirusTotal.com.

1. Open Google Chrome Browser

2. Click on three vertical dots in right hand top corner (below the close / maximize buttons)

3. On settings page click on Search engine, then click on Manage Search engines and site search, you can also type chrome://settings/searchEngines in search bar to reach to this page.

4. Scroll down to find Site Search section and click on the Add button.

5. Fill in the three fields in the Add search engine pop-up box as shown below and then click Add button

Search engine: VirusTotal
Shortcut : You can use any shortcut, I am using shortcut: vt
URL: This would be the search URL from VirusTotal.com with added %s which will be get replaced by the query text that user enters. So add following URL in the inputbox: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/search/%s