Is this screen a virus?

Question

Level 1

4 points

Is this screen a virus?

Hello all,

I'm currently on my friends Macbook because something strange has happened to my own Macbook, leaving me unable to input commands, but I can move my mouse cursor.

I went away for 20 minutes, leaving the laptop alone and when I returned, what looks to be a strange screensaver is on my screen.

I have screensavers disabled.

At the top and bottom of the screen there is a 'danger' coloured scrolling line (yellow and black), and in the middle there are five timeline-like things on the left and right, each with scrolling text in them. The text says All, Apple Rem. Desktop, AppleShare IP, iTunes Music Sharing and NetUpdate on both sides. Beneath each box it says '118 seconds ago', but this has not changed even though this thing has been on the screen for at least half an hour.

I have tried to press all keys and nothing happens, and when I press a combination of keys the screen freezes for a few moments before some lines come up in the 'all' boxes, suggesting that it's monitoring activity.

Attached is an image taken on my iPod.

Someone please help, I've been doing a lot of photo editing for university and I'd not like to lose any of the work I've done by force shutting it down! Is there a way to get rid of this, or is it a virus? I've had the Macbook for at least a month so it's relatively new!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.1)

Posted on Oct 28, 2011 1:56 PM

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Answer 1

CMCSK

Level 6

11,452 points

Oct 28, 2011 2:51 PM in response to Flamentah

I've had the Macbook for at least a month so it's relatively new!

You are still under warranty. Call applecare.

There are no viruses for osx

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Answer 2

aliput01

Level 1

0 points

Nov 4, 2011 3:39 PM in response to Flamentah

Hi,

I've just received the same screen after using the software update function function. I'm running Lion. Really freaked me out. I've since unplugged my machine from the internet and changed all system passwords.

Would like to find out any common ground with you. my machine is just 2 weeks old. I've been careful to implement all the security possible to stop any attack.

CMSK you are WRONG there are currently 2 strains of virus for the mac, both disruptive at system level.

I've run viruschecker and apart from finding 10 pc viruses in spam email attachments nothing else has been flagged up.

I have an extra screen attached to the iMac - and have had Parallels installed. I've since removed this program.

Also I had the latest version of AppleJack installed. I've also removed this.

Will contact applecare to find out what they think.

WIll keep you posted.

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Answer 3

Nov 4, 2011 3:45 PM in response to aliput01

CMCSK is not wrong. No viruses exist for mac OSX, however, malware does. If you have not done so yet and are concerned, install a free a/v software program from the app store called ClamXav.

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Answer 4

aliput01

Level 1

0 points

Nov 4, 2011 4:42 PM in response to shldr2thewheel

OK well lets not split hairs eh? 🙂

In the mean time I've had a bit of a break through.

After restarting my machine I set VirusBarrier Dashboard to run. And clicking on it's interface I realised it is monitoring all the things that we both saw on your screenshot Flamentah: All, Apple Rem. Desktop, AppleShare IP, iTunes Music Sharing, NetUpdate (there are a bunch more which you may not have seen but were evident on my 2nd screen).

This got me thinking and I decided to continue the install of the system updates that were downloaded before this incident happened.

As you know, the finder shuts down, installs the updates and restarts the computer. I noticed that upon hitting the install my system automatically restarted in Safe Mode, UNLOADED VirusBarrier THEN installed the updates before restarting.

I believe what happened is that upon download of my system update, VirusBarrier (still running at the time as I hadn't turned it off) kicked in to check the files, resulting in the now infamous screen.

Because there are so many files all zipped up in the downloads (there were approx. 2.3Gb of downloaded files) It would have taken VirusBarrier a good few hours if not a day to check all the files - that may be why after 1/2 hour you were still waiting.

Of course I'm assuming you have some anti virus software installed on your mac. If you don't then I'm not sure what the issue is. All I know is VirusBarrier is monitoring exactly the same things in the same order as was displayed on our screens.

Hope this is helpful.

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Answer 5

Flamentah Author

Level 1

4 points

Nov 5, 2011 5:34 AM in response to Flamentah

Hi Aliput, thanks for all your help. To fix this I had shut down the mac and rebooted it, everything seemed fine. It then did it again a little later which I raged about for a moment then moved my mouse to see if anything would happen. The screen disapeared. It seems that it WAS a screensaver which I was unaware of. I have virus barrier and it must have set itself after I recently turned my preferences to never go into sleep mode. When I checked the screensaver options it showed that Virusbarrier has that screen as a screensaver also. Not sure why the first time it wouldnt let me come off it, might have frozen considering at the time I had 400+ photos open in the RAW editing process of photoshop. Eitherway I've disabled it now and all should be fine. Thanks again for your help 🙂

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Answer 6

aliput01

Level 1

0 points

Nov 5, 2011 5:54 AM in response to Flamentah

Thanks Flamentah. That's a relief. It's good to have a theory turned into fact. I'll take a look at my VirusBarrier prefs too and turn the screen saver off. Glad this wasn't malware. 😎

Something to note: Reason I got this new mac was because I had graphics card malfunction on my old mac. It was because I turned off energy saver and screen saver which really limits the life of the grahics card. (If you turn off energy saver you'll get a warning about this in Lion). So be careful about turning off energy saver and screen saver together dude.

Thanks for helping sort this out

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