Safari crashes repeatedly

Question

For the past two days, Safari has been crashing on me at least once an hour.  Every time, it says something along the lines that "Safari quit unexpectedly due to .XaraXtremeve.so"
What does this mean?
How can I stop it?
I am running Safari 5.1.2 in Mac OS X (10.6.8) on a MacBook Pro.

Answer 1

You’ve been infected with a variant of what’s commonly called the “Flashback” or “Fakeflash” malware, although the names are obsolete. See this Apple support document:
About Flashback malware
If you’re certain you know when the infection took place, and you back up with Time Machine or something similar, you can save yourself a lot of time by restoring your whole system from the most recent snapshot taken before it was infected. Then take Steps 8, 9, and 11 below.
How can you tell when the infection took place? All you can be sure of is that it was some time before the problems started.
If you don’t know when you were infected, there's no easy, reliable way to remove the malware, because it's constantly changing. There are differences of opinion on this site as to the best of course of action, so you should do your own research before deciding how to proceed.
I suggest you take the following steps:
1. Disconnect the infected machine from the Internet immediately.
2. Back up all data to at least two different devices, if you haven't already done so.
3. Boot from your recovery partition (if running Mac OS X 10.7 or later) or your installation disc (if running an earlier version of the Mac OS), launch Disk Utility, and erase the startup volume. This action will destroy all data on the volume, so you must be sure of your backups.
4. Reconnect to the Internet and install the Mac OS.
5. Reboot and go through the initial setup process to create an account with the same name as your old one. Don’t import anything from your backups at this stage.
6. If running Mac OS X 10.6.x or earlier, run Software Update. You may have to run it more than once to fully update your system.
7. Restore the contents of the top-level subfolders of your home folder except “Library” from the most recent backup. The Library folder may contain components of the malware. This is where restoring becomes difficult, and I can only give general guidelines.
Of the top-level subfolders of Library that are visible in the Finder, I think it’s safe to restore the following, which contain most of the data you’d want to keep:
Audio
Calendars
ColorSync
Colors
Favorites
FontCollections
Fonts
Images
Keychains
Mail (except Mail/Bundles)
Safari (except Safari/Extensions)
The following are not safe to restore, at least not in full:
Application Support
Internet Plug-Ins
LaunchAgents
Preferences
If you have Time Machine snapshots of these folders that you’re sure are older than the infection, you can restore from one of those snapshots.
Folders not mentioned above may or may not be safe. If in doubt, don’t restore them. Don’t restore any hidden files or folders, no matter where they are. Hidden files should be considered suspicious.
8. If you’re running Mac OS X 10.5.8 or earlier, launch Safari and select Safari ▹ Preferences… ▹ Security from the menu bar. Uncheck the box labeled Enable Java. Because of known bugs, Java in those OS versions is unsafe to use on the Internet. (Note: I’m not referring to JavaScript, which is unrelated to Java, despite the similar names.) If you’re running Mac OS 10.6.8 or later, you should still disable the Java web plugin unless you really need it. Few websites have legitimate Java content nowadays. If you encounter one that does, enable Java temporarily.
9. Change every Internet password you have, starting with banking passwords. Check all financial accounts for unauthorized transactions. Take this step only after you’ve secured your system in the preceding steps, not before.
10. Reinstall your third-party software from fresh downloads or original media, not from backups which may be contaminated.
11. If you use any third-party web browsers, disable Java in their preferences. As with step 8, this step is mandatory if you’re running any version of Mac OS X older than 10.6. Otherwise it’s optional, but recommended.