Possible Virus?!

It could be any number of afflictions, depending on the site the file came from. MacScan has a free 30-day trial on their vidus/malware/spyware scanning app, you may want to give that a try. Good luck!

I am quite concerned that I may have been unfortunate enough to have caught a virus!

highly unlikely. check out this user tip.

Hello:

There are NO viruses that affect a Mac running OS X - none.

Having said that, it might be that you have had your browser hijacked. I would probably empty the cache and then delete it - along with any relevant files.

Barry

Shortly after, firefox (version 3.6.16) started opening multple windows automatically, all sex type pages!! I had to force quit.

That's typical of a Java popup storm. Each page that came up had a Java command in it to launch a new page and fill it with whatever URL it called for. So they go nuts calling one new page after another. It doesn't take a virus, or any type of malware to do that. You just need Java and Javascript enabled in any browser, and away they go.

In each of these are two files, exactly the same in each folder. These are "plugin-crossdomain.xml" and "plugin-policy.html"

The only relevant information I could find on these names were here. It seems to be an attempt to find a flaw in Flash. I was thinking that maybe it was trying to replace files within the Flash player with the ones you name. But I checked through the entire Flash Player 10 plugin, and there are no such files by those names.

Certainly wouldn't hurt to try MacScan, or the free ClamXAV, but I doubt either one will find anything.

I believe that you are seeing is part of the ongoing security problems enabled by Adobe Flash. It's not a virus, but rather a "Feature" that can combine with Javascript and can be taken advantage of by websites for whatever purposes they want to exploit. Here's a description of the problem.

The sex page popups are generating cash for the site owner. The owners of the sites that initiate the popups doesn't care if you look at the pages, or buy any products. Their server records the hits and they get paid by the content owner.

Adobe has patched Flash at least 30 times in the last 3 years. It's a constant security problem for all OS's. You should check to see if you are running the latest version ofFlash.

The recovered files in the trash problem has been around for quite a few years. It doesn't mean much, and the files can be safely deleted.

Great minds think alike, dechamp? 😀 We happened to post the same link.

Nobody's commenting on the downloading-something-to-help-watch-a-video plus sex thing, but that sounds suspiciously like the MO for the RSPlug trojan. Admittedly, the traditional ploy was for it to be a plug-in used for watching sex videos, so it's not quite the same thing, but it's close enough to be worth thinking about. Especially since alternate forms of RSPlug have been seen in the wild.

Note that I don't necessarily think this is likely, nor do I think that most/any of the other symptoms described might be caused by an RSPlug infection. However, it's definitely worth running a scan for malware using something like ClamXav:

http://www.clamxav.com/

For more information on this topic, see my Mac Virus Guide:

http://www.reedcorner.net/guides/macvirus/

Perhaps off topic, but I might suggest installing ClickToFlash to help suppress Flash until needed.