Date & Time changed by itself - VIRUS ?

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Level 1

8 points

Date & Time changed by itself - VIRUS ?

Wonder if anyone of you can understand this strange behaviour.

When I boot up this morning (not connected to Internet yet - Airport off, no internet connection), I have the following messages:

1. A series of 4 messages asking to "Deny" or "Allow" 4 programs requests - can't remember the exact request but the Help screen (smaller question mark at bottom left corner) explained the programs are asking for something. The programs have names of 4 to 5 letters something like "pbkp" etc Note. just an illustration not the exact name. Forgot to write them down.

2. One message warning my computer date and time set to sometime in 2008 !!!

I did the following:

1. Clicked "Deny" to all four requests.
2. Go to System Preferences - Date & Time was set to "Set date and time automatically" - but the date and time was changed to above.

I then connect to Internet - the date and time were reset automatically to the correct date and time.

It is now more than 10 hours since and I have no problems.

But, should I be concern with:

1. why the date and time was changed?
2. the appearing of the 4 messages?

I understand we should not get viruses with Mac.

Is there anything I should do to cleanse the computer?

Note:

2 days earlier I did received an email on Google mail and I inadvertently clicked on the link which led to a site to buy medicine and the like. I immediately close the site and thrashed the mail.

COuld this be the problem?

MacBook Pro 15" 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB memory, Mac OS X (10.6.4), Have another Macbook Pro with Tiger

Posted on Sep 17, 2010 6:38 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,314 points

Sep 17, 2010 7:24 AM in response to hock_eye

1. A series of 4 messages asking to "Deny" or "Allow" 4 programs requests - can't remember the exact request but the Help screen (smaller question mark at bottom left corner) explained the programs are asking for something. The programs have names of 4 to 5 letters something like "pbkp" etc Note. just an illustration not the exact name. Forgot to write them down.

This may just be keychain requests to allow access to password protected information.

2. Go to System Preferences - Date & Time was set to "Set date and time automatically" - but the date and time was changed to above.

It will only set automatically if it is conencted to the Net.

2 days earlier I did received an email on Google mail and I inadvertently clicked on the link which led to a site to buy medicine and the like. I immediately close the site and thrashed the mail.

On a PC I'd be more worried about this, but it is possible you may be one of the few to have managed to get affected by a trojan horse, not a virus. A virus can act without any action by the user. A trojan horse only reacts to user requests. It is possible that part of this e-mail actually was to present a series of deny/allow requests. If you are the administrative user of the computer or have authorized the program with your password to act on your machine, you could in fact have allowed a trojan horse to run. But without giving the machine your password, there is very little a program can do to impact the computer.

Never open an e-mail you don't recognize. That's lesson number one. If your friends and family send you an e-mail, make sure they indicate in the subject line what they are writing about. This will avoid you confusing it for something else.

If you aren't expecting an e-mail, don't open it.

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Answer 2

hock_eye Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 17, 2010 7:16 PM in response to a brody

Thanks for your response.

So, I guess I should not worry too much. It has been 2 days past and no adverse behaviour.

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