I Fear My Mac Has Become A Zombie

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I Fear My Mac Has Become A Zombie

I recently came into the 21st century and took the DSL plunge, but I fear that my machine has become a zombie; I'm getting a ton of email (on Mail) that looks like responses from spam filters that are rejecting messages that were never sent by me. (The subject lines are almost all "Returned Mail" or some variant thereof or the messages are from "Mail Delivery Subsystem.)

Does this sound like a zombie or just garden variety spam of a particularly homogenous sort? And if I get the latest version of Norton for OS X will it give the zombie(s) a well-deserved shotgun blast to the head?

Mac Mini, Mac OS X (10.3)

Posted on Mar 23, 2006 1:37 PM

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Answer 1

Dave Stowe

Level 5

5,180 points

Mar 23, 2006 1:53 PM in response to Rib Eye

Rib Eye...as to the mail/spam issue contact your ISP provider...and to the second part stay away from Norton for for OSX or the shotgun blast will be to your mini..Norton does bad things to OSX... unless your speaking of Norton A/V ..

Message was edited by: Dave Stowe

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Answer 2

Rib Eye Author

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Mar 23, 2006 2:19 PM in response to Dave Stowe

Would the ISP be able to tell me if my Mac is zombified? Or would contacting them be just a way of keeping me losing my service while I try to figure out what is going on.

Could my ISP fix the problem if my machine has been hijacked?

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Answer 3

Dave Stowe

Level 5

5,180 points

Mar 23, 2006 2:22 PM in response to Rib Eye

Rib Eye...'Zombified' equates to virus?

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Answer 4

Rib Eye Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 23, 2006 2:25 PM in response to Dave Stowe

That's what I'm trying to figure out: Is my machine infected with some sort of malware that is causing it to function as stealth spam generator. If it is, how do I stop it? If it's not, what the heck is going on?

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Answer 5

Dave Stowe

Level 5

5,180 points

Mar 23, 2006 2:35 PM in response to Rib Eye

Ok...Try entering...'trojan/virus'in...'Search Discussions'so many pages to read...something may fit

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Answer 6

Mar 23, 2006 6:16 PM in response to Rib Eye

That's what I'm trying to figure out: Is my machine
infected with some sort of malware that is causing it
to function as stealth spam generator. If it is, how
do I stop it? If it's not, what the heck is going on?

The most likely explanation is that you're the victim of a "Joe Job". Especially if your ISP is a big, well known one and your username is kind of common.

Otherwise, have you downloaded and installed any software recently from sites you aren't sure about? I don't know of any email zombie programs for the Mac, but that doesn't mean there aren't any.

Also, do you have a router/firewall? Or is your Mac connected directly to the DSL router? A router should protect you from most attacks, especially if you haven't fiddled around with its setup. If you don't have a router, do you have a good password on your computer? Preferably something with numbers and letters, and not in any dictionary.

Finally, you can use the "Activity Monitor" application from your "Utilities" folder to watch the network activity. There will always be some small amount of activity periodically, but if you see a steady amount of more than a few KB once in a while, then maybe you do have something going on.

charlie

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Answer 7

Dave Stowe

Level 5

5,180 points

Mar 23, 2006 6:35 PM in response to Charles Minow

Mr Minow...more than I knew before....:)thanks

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