Help: Accounts "Message Bus" and "Policy Kit" apeared in Accounts PrefPane

Question

Level 1

8 points

Help: Accounts "Message Bus" and "Policy Kit" apeared in Accounts PrefPane

I just noticed that there are a couple of accounts in Accounts PrefPane that I haven't seen before. I didn't create them either. I don't remember exactly when I checked the Accounts PrefPane last, but at that time, they were definitely not there. The two are named "Message Bus" and "Policy Kit", and they are both "Standard" accounts. (Respective user names are "messagebus" and "polkituser".) Does anyone know what they are for and what could have created these accounts? Should I be worried that someone hacked in...? (I'm behind a router firewall in addition to the osx firewall.) Thanks for any help and insights! (I did do a google search on these two users, but I didn't really get a good answer.)

Some info, if it helps...

$ nireport . /users uid gid name realname home | grep "messagebus"
500 500 messagebus Message Bus /dev/null
$ nireport . /users uid gid name realname home | grep "polkituser"
503 503 polkituser Policy Kit /dev/null

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Feb 27, 2010 2:16 PM

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Answer 1

nekobito Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 27, 2010 5:43 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks, I've been searching for answers myself.. I found one other post from a while back (I missed this before sifting through tons of info):
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4473731

Does this sound like macports could have created those accounts?
Now I'm super worried.. (-_-;)

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

246,419 points

Feb 27, 2010 2:40 PM in response to nekobito

Hi nekobito, and a warm welcome to the forums! 🙂

Did you not ever install Policy Kit?

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PolicyKit?ref=darwinports.com

And/or dbus?

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus?ref=darwinports.com

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Answer 3

nekobito Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 27, 2010 4:07 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for the welcome and a reply. 🙂

And No... I didn't even know what they were until I followed the links you provided. Is it possible for these things to be installed (and accounts created) without my knowledge? Like with some other software? Most recent install was teleport from abyssoft. Before that (looking at the dates on my list of applications) were audacity and macports. I'm pretty certain that I didn't see these accounts before that. Should I not be worried about these accounts? I got worried when I saw these, and went to GRC ShieldsUp! to test my ports and stuff. (They were all okay - whew!)

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Answer 4

nekobito Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 27, 2010 5:10 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks, I just deleted the two accounts and I'm not seeing any issues with that.. What could have possibly created these accounts? These accounts had no home folder either. If it was really an intrusion, does this mean that someone had access to everything and anything on my iMac?

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

246,419 points

Feb 27, 2010 5:28 PM in response to nekobito

I'm not sure what it means, but Policy Kit & D-Bus sounds scar if you didn't do it...

PolicyKit is an application-level toolkit for defining and handling the policy that allows unprivileged processes to speak to privileged processes...

D-Bus is a message bus system, a simple way for applications to talk to one another. In addition to interprocess communication, D-Bus helps coordinate process lifecycle; it makes it simple and reliable to code a "single instance" application or daemon, and to launch applications and daemons on demand when their services are needed.

It may well be something you installed uses those, but I have not found any yet.