Virus on my mac, anything I can do?

Gustov

Gustov

Gustov

Soldato
Joined
30 May 2008
Posts
7,788
Hi Guys,

So my mac crashes every time I open Firefox or Google chrome, it runs with Safari but just about. It freezes every 10 mins or so for about 2 mins and then starts working again.

My hotmail account has also been hacked recently, does anyone have any advise?

Thanks,

Gustov
 
I was told by a salesman in pc world that mac are secure and dont get viruses like windows machines, he also said that every program only works in it own space and doesnt have access to anything else?

So cant you just unistall these programs and reinstall?
 
Unfortunately sometimes life isn't as simple as that and unfortunately sometimes salesmen lie/have no idea what they are talking about.

I'm sure the die hard Mac fraternity will be in here stating similar stuff to the salesmen soon...
 
Wil it let you instal anti-virus software fully? kaspersky have one on the app store (it takes ages (3-4 hours C2Duo) to search trough my 180GB of data though :P

But i would have thought that the only way to be completely safe when removing a virus would be to clean instal from the disks?

Also, STOP VISITING THOSE DODGY SITES ;)
 
There are (pointless) Anti-Vrius program's for OS X but seeing as there is no in-the-wild viruses* for OSX I doubt you have one. You may have Malware though, if somehow the person that "hacked" you got access to your computer.

It's probably related to permissions or some such. Run disk utility and do a repair. Or get Onyx and reset you caches. This may help. Or it could be hardware related - try booting into the diagnostics tools.


* Yes there have been viruses but they need the user manually execute them and them enter their admin password. Not exactly the most efficient method of transmission.
 
adencool said:
I was told by a salesman in pc world that mac are secure and dont get viruses like windows machines, he also said that every program only works in it own space and doesnt have access to anything else?

So cant you just unistall these programs and reinstall?
Click to expand...

Are you serious? Try your hardest to forget everything that any employee in that shop told you.
 
adencool said:
I was told by a salesman in pc world that mac are secure and dont get viruses like windows machines, he also said that every program only works in it own space and doesnt have access to anything else?

So cant you just unistall these programs and reinstall?
Click to expand...

Hehe, salesman giving advise on computer security :D
 
Cheers guys, is there not a piece of software I can buy that will sort this out for me? ONYX? I have no idea how to run disk utility and sort a repair?

The only dodgy stuff I do on it really is downloading some stuff via torrents.
 
LordSplodge said:
* Yes there have been viruses but they need the user manually execute them and them enter their admin password. Not exactly the most efficient method of transmission.
Click to expand...

That's no longer true as there are some that can bypass this requirement and that seems to include the latest iteration of the flashback trojan that has infected over half a million macs.
 
adencool said:
I was told by a salesman in pc world that mac are secure and dont get viruses like windows machines, he also said that every program only works in it own space and doesnt have access to anything else?

So cant you just unistall these programs and reinstall?
Click to expand...

lololol

Stop, I'm nearly crying here :p

They also tell old couples that they'll be needing an i7 for email and web browsing.

They will say anything to flog you the most expensive item they can.
 
demonix said:
That's no longer true as there was one that can bypass this requirement and that seems to include the latest iteration of the flashback trojan that has infected over half a million macs.
Click to expand...

The clue is in what you wrote. Trojan, not Virus. Also that loophole (thanks Java!) has now been closed.

As for the half a million Macs well that figure is in dispute but regardless it is a tiny percentage of the OS X user base.
 
It doesn't sound like a virus at all to me, sounds like something has just gone **** up somewhere. I'd be using recovery and starting afresh.
 
Gustov said:
Cheers guys, is there not a piece of software I can buy that will sort this out for me? ONYX? I have no idea how to run disk utility and sort a repair?

The only dodgy stuff I do on it really is downloading some stuff via torrents.
Click to expand...

Go to Applications -> Utilities and run Disk Utility. Do a scan and repair of permissions (and the disk state to be on the safe side)

Onxy can be found here and can be used to clear caches and much more. Just make sure you read the instructions and have a backup (same applies to Disk Utility really)

I'd check for Flashback (Google gives simple Terminal command) seeing as you used Torrents.

Finally hold down Alt upon reboot and boot into the recovery console. You can do a hardware check from here.

Hope that helps.
 
LordSplodge said:
There are (pointless) Anti-Vrius program's for OS X but seeing as there is no in-the-wild viruses* for OSX I doubt you have one. You may have Malware though, if somehow the person that "hacked" you got access to your computer.
Click to expand...

How is antivirus software pointless when there is Mac malware in the wild?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom