Q: MacScan detected a Trojan Horse, what do I do?
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Sep 13, 2012 7:39 AMby macjack,Get rid of MacScam!
The issues with the emails is called spoofing, which means a friends pc is infected and the malware has tapped his contacts for addresses then it sends out messages as if the sender was your mother. Nothing you can do, eventually it will stop or the pc user will eliminate their malware.
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Sep 13, 2012 8:05 AMby jirih,What is the problem with MacScan, I thought it should be reliable since it's a $40 software? Does this mean the "trojan horse" it detected isn't really one? If not, then what is the file in the isolated folder? should I still delete it?
Also I checked my e-mail sent folder and all those strange e-mails are in there so it wasn't as if I was the sender but I actually was the sender, if that makes sense.
I even cleaned out 40gb of stuff from my hard drive but it still takes like 40 jumps to even open Chrome. Actually Chrome is so slow it's unusable, why could that be? It's only Chrome though, I'm using firefox right now and it's fast-ish.
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Sep 13, 2012 8:15 AMby macjack,Yes, the email is spoofing. MacScan is more than likely the source of your other problems. If it comes with an uninstaller use it.
Mac Scan, I have no idea what it found but it wasn't malware...
"Mac OS X versions 10.6.7 and later have built-in detection of known Mac malware in downloaded files. The recognition database is automatically updated once a day; however, you shouldn't rely on it, because the attackers are always at least a day ahead of the defenders. In most cases, there’s no benefit from any other automated protection against malware."
After deleting the software along with "malware" it found, if your system is still not running properly re-install the OS from your Revovery volume. If you need directions let us know.
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Sep 13, 2012 9:44 AMby jirih,Alright, I got rid of MacScan and the supposed trojan file. I restarted the macbook and it seems okay. Although I have noticed that lately, every time I either shut down or restart, it always starts up saying that the computer shut down because of a problem and then it makes me send a report to Apple. I have no clue why it does this but it doesn't affect anything else. It seems to be running better, chrome now took 8 jumps to open instead of 40 and is usable.
I have 44gb free out of 250gb on my HD. I used to have under 1gb of free space I just cleaned it out about a week ago.
No, this is yahoo but yes those were the only sent mails I didn't recognize and I've changed my password too.
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Sep 13, 2012 12:25 PMby thomas_r.,Just to add a little to what has already been said... you'll find more details on the e-mail issue here:
Someone is sending messages from my e-mail address!
Note that this could be more than just simple spoofing, so you should probably change your e-mail account password.
Also, I don't suppose you remember the actual name of the trojan that MacScan found, do you? The name is very important for determining the threat level. Most likely, it was a false positive (MacScan has a problem with that), but possibly not. For more information about malware, see my Mac Malware Guide.
Regarding your performance issues, having only 1 GB of free space was probably a major part of it. But if you continue having problems, see my Mac Performance Guide.
