bemkah wrote:
I just noticed that my Finder menu had some of the words replaced with numbers - for example, N169.3, N148, N35. The numbers seem to have replaced options like 'clean up' etc.
These weren't there yesterday, so I figured it was a virus.
Not a virus, but you have been infected by the latest Flashback Trojan which ClamXav won't find yet.
I downloaded ClamXav and it said there was one infection: 6572.emlx Heuristics.Phishing
It won't delete, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do now.
That infection, if it even is one, has nothing to do with your problem. At worst it's junk mail trying to get you to give up privacy information by clicking on a link. To get rid of it, you should right-click / control-click on the infection or file name in ClamXav and select "Reveal in Finder". When the window opens, double click on the file "6572.emlx" which will open it in your e-mail client. If it is truly a phishing / junk / spam message, then use the delete button in the e-mail client to get rid of it. If this is from a gmail account let me know as there is one additional step to insure you permanently delete it from the server. I have sever e-mails from my credit union that are identified as heuristics.phishing.... because they contain a link to the IRS, so are deemed "suspicious". I just make note of the file number and ignore it on subsequent scans.
It hasn't slowed my computer down any or caused any programs to malfunction, but I do a fair bit of internet banking from my computer so I'm worried.
Is there any danger of my information being sent anywhere? Is there anything I can do to get rid of this virus? Should I take my computer to be fixed? I'm not the most technically minded person obviously so any help you could give me would be awesome.
The Trojan infection has already sent information out about your computer, but chances are good that none of your banking information has been compromised. It just announced that your computer had been successfully infected for future use, whatever that may be.
Since you say your aren't technically skilled, then I won't bother having you attempt to clean it up. We are only starting to understand how to do that now. It's quite complicated and still incomplete. Your best bet at this point is to erase your hard drive and reinstall the system then restore all your data from backup.
The other mystery we are struggling with is how did this happen. Past versions of this Trojan were advertised as updates to the FlashPlayer and required you to download and install the update, but the folks that have been complaining about this for the past couple of days claim not to have done any of that. If you recall seeing anything like that or downloading anything in the past four to five days, let me know.