Really high network activity even when airport is off

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Level 1

4 points

Really high network activity even when airport is off

Hi,

I have been seeing my network activity spike on my MBP 15" (previous model, not the latest retina). This is happening even when the airport is turned off and I am not plugged in to the ethernet or anything (see image)

Fans start running etc... Any idea about what could be going on???

Thanks

- J

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Aug 31, 2012 3:55 PM

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Answer 1

sig

Level 8

35,862 points

Aug 31, 2012 5:10 PM in response to jh81

Your photo shows nothing unusual.

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Answer 2

jh81 Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 1, 2012 12:46 PM in response to sig

hmm i zoomed in a bit. note that the airport is completely off... doesnt that seem odd?

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Answer 3

sanjampet

Level 5

7,982 points

Sep 1, 2012 1:38 PM in response to jh81

I get that too, it something pinging I think. I have my airport turned off as well and get similar activity.

Do you have other devices that could be pinging your machine?

Phone, other computers, etc. maybe.

As long as your machine is not sending anything I would not be worried.

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Answer 4

jh81 Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 1, 2012 1:45 PM in response to sanjampet

I am not sure about that. So the chart shows that over 200MB of data have been "received" by my MBP even when the airport card is off. How would that even be possible? Unless I am misreading the chart of course ...

But having my MBP pinged (if it were to be pinged, none of my other devices do that or even use Bluetooth etc) would still not generate that much incoming traffic, no? (ie 200+MB of data)

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Answer 5

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Sep 1, 2012 1:53 PM in response to jh81

If Airport is off and no ethernet connected there is no network. (Unless you have another connection not mentioned here)

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Answer 6

jh81 Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 1, 2012 3:37 PM in response to Csound1

Hey,

Yes exactly - thats what was strange. No other networks. Any idea why this could be happening?

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Answer 7

jh81 Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 5, 2012 12:42 PM in response to jh81

i did some more testing. here is what happens after i shut the airport off - this is about 10-15m later:

nothing is connected to this mac, no ethernet no anything...

so i kept the airport off and shut it down

then when i restart i immediately see network activity even while the airport is still off...

and it continues:

the reason that i am posting is because i have noticed this computer being a little bit slower than usual and i guess you just have to wonder: is it a virus? some sort of rootkit?

what could be going on?

thanks for any advice!

- J

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Answer 8

jh81 Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 16, 2013 10:42 AM in response to jh81

wondering if this could mean that i have some sort of virus or trojan horse? I noticed it again the other day - no network activity since hours before, where i had turned my airport off an put the computer to sleep.

i opened it several hours later - the airport still off and saw this in my activity monitor:

any ideas??

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Answer 9

CASnyd3r

Level 1

0 points

Mar 26, 2014 11:00 AM in response to jh81

Hi JH81,

I'm wondering if you ever got a helpful response to your query as to whether the airport failing to turn off while excessive intenet activity continues (none of your own) could be a virus or other hijacking of your computer, because that is the only thing I can think of for explaining what is happening to my computer. It seems to be that if the MAC OSX were to override manual shutdown of the airport to protect an essential transmission of data, that it wouldn't change the airport icon to off, and would give you an error message of some sort. But if it were a virus overriding the manual shut down, they would program it to try to make you think that you had successfully shut down the airport while you hadn't. Below is my description of what happened with my machine - as you see, I had taken every precaution to ensure any software couldn't automatically access the internet without my permission, but it still happened. Is the phenomena still happening to you? Has anyone been able to help you at all?

I'm running a Macbook Pro circa 2007 with OSX 10.6.8 and Firefox 27.0.1, and just had a circumstance that really puzzled me. I have a Hughesnet satellite modem with wireless router that I connect to via the airport, and I use Little Snitch software in the demo mode so I know and have to approve which software can send info through the internet connection., but the demo mode had just timed out and terminated and within a half hour of that the computer fans started speeding up to max and the CPU got blazing hot (+200 degF).

Worried, I looked at the activity monitor and it was showing lots of internet activity even though I wasn't doing anything on the internet at the time, and I have all my software updates set to manual because otherwise they would use up my allotted daytime bandwidth and leave none for me. I'd already completed manual software updates during the nightly free time recently. Fearing my computer was hijacked & out of my control, I turned the airport off to terminate the internet connection, BUT IT DIDN'T TURN OFF, and though the indicator in the top right of the screen said it was off, packets were still streaming back & forth like crazy on the activity monitor, and the poor thing was still overheating. So I rebooted the computer, and when it came back up there was no internet activity, and things started cooling down, back to normal again.

Though I'm no techie, this seems to me like my computer has been hijacked by some virus that has taken control of the airport and is feeding me lies about the internet connection status, so that it can use my computer for sending out its own messages. Has anyone heard of a virus that prevents the airport from being turned off, and what should I do about it? I'm afraid to back up my data with my time machine, though its been months since that was done, for fear I'd overwrite a virus-free state of the time machine files with a virus laden one, but I also hate to do something to clean up the machine without backing up my files, and lose a bunch of data. Is there virus protection software that could surgically search out and remove only the virus from my machine and leave most everything else untouched?

Any advice is welcome,

Christina

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