Q: What is this? Trojan or other?
Hello, I am having a now persistent problem with my mini mac(s) and would really appreciate help. I am leading a boring internet life while job hunting (or trying to!) and have always been pretty cautious about the stuff I access and download from sites anyway.
I first noticed a problem last week on my new Mac (running Yosemite) when using Spotify, I had some odd noises coming out of my speakers and just thought it was connection trouble with the internet. Next day - slightly erratic behaviour then developed e.g. the webpage on Safari kept resizing and my mouse wasn't clicking accurately. Next thing I know, +++++ is being typed across anything I try to type on. Restarted my computer, but couldn't enter the password because of the +++ problem (accompanied by some musical beeping). OMG virus on my Mac I thought! Needed to send some e-mails and wanted to find out how to solve the problem, so I got out my old mini mac, which I think has Lion on it - was not on Spotify, used Chrome browser and possibly Thunderbird. After half an hour, I got some beeps, flickering webpage - I just shut the thing down and haven't opened it since!
I spoke to my internet provider and a Mac repairs shop - upshot - changed e-mail password and reloaded operating system on new mac using Option-R boot, loaded Sophos and trashed my downloads and quite a lot of e-mails. It's been fine for a week, but it's gone mad again!! I got odd noise over my speakers last night when using Spotify- ran Sophos which detected nothing, assumed I was being paranoid, but I have the ++++ problem again. I use Safari to browse, I use Microsoft Outlook for e-mail, but used to use Thunderbird and occasionally access my old e-mails on that.
What exactly is this? Where is it hiding and is a total wipe of my hard drives the only answer? Is that the answer, or could/should I do something else less/more drastic? Why isn't Sophos finding it? I have an external hard drive and an iPad, could anything be hiding on these? Is the root of the problem outside of my system and what on earth do I do about that?
Just reloaded OS X on my new Mac, but not feeling very optimistic. Very, very, very grateful for advice.
Mac mini, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)
Posted on May 27, 2016 4:51 AM