What is Genieo and why did it appeared misteriosouly on my MacBook Pro?

This is quite interesting, and indicates that Genieo may be escalating from crappy adware to actual malware.

Do either one of you happen to remember an exact page address that you were on when this window came up? Most likely that won't be of any help, because this is probably coming up from cycling advertisements on the site, and the ads wouldn't be the same the next time around. But you never know... any additional information that you can provide would help to expose what's going on.

I have a screen

shot

Do you remember exactly what page you were on that redirected you to that site?

I think it was one page on this website : gamesradar.com as I ws reading something on it while that happened.

I had the same fake falsh update popup, but that did not happen on the same website (cant remember ...)

I did dowload the version provided by the fake popup, and then, i went on genieo's official website to download their own version ...

here are the changes :

official md5:9426293f02b056a44f9e64e16aac20d8

fake md5:cdc43c6ff0ba8dc85d10fecd61715c45

when i right-clic on the files in finder to have more info :

official size:691 097 octets

official comming from:http://download.genieo.com/partner/genieo/mac_release/live/InstallGenieo.dmg, http://www.genieo.com/

fake size:691 179 octets

fake comming from:http://download.genieo.com/partner/webpic/mac_release/live/InstallGenieo.dmg, http://superdownloaderssite.info/

content of http://superdownloaderssite.info/ (wich name has no relation with the name of "genieo"), only contains a small text and point to a link to download genieo ... i don't know if it's really suspicious, maybe ?

to stop any speculation, maybe the best is to decompile the two version to check what are these 100 octects plus in the fake version, but i don't have the knowledge to do that, but i can provide the two files;)

edit

anyway, for those who want to remove genieo, the procedure is here : http://www.genieo.com/faq#uninstall

Message was edited by: naja_trance

Hi everybody,

I just downloaded this genieo stuff, but I am very scared now that it might have been a bad virus.

I remember the adobe reader popping up that it wanted to download an update. I remember kk's screenshot with the possibly fake install flash player upgrade, I agreed to install. It launched the download of a image file which I opened and it created a genieo driver.

Now the mistery is that all this disappeared, there is no genieo application anyware, the downloaded image file disappeared from the downloads and also from the deleted items. Firefox has nothing I can see.

Is it because I have various anti virus software like avast antivirus or intyego virus barrier, I don't know.

I will immediately perform a full check of the mac to see if there is anything suspicious.

may have a look at this HFS & HFS+ friendly antivirus live CD : http://sourceforge.net/projects/antiviruslivecd/

That's a Linux tool that just wraps the ClamAV engine. Plus, most AV software won't actually detect Genieo as malware. I'm curious why you recommend this tool?

Thomas A Reed wrote:

I'm curious why you recommend this tool?

Hi Thomas,

1) Hendrick wants to perform a full check of his mac -> the best to do that (not only for Genieo 😉 but for all "shitware") is to use a live cd antivirus to boot with, and the one i recommanded is one that is perfectlly HFS and HFS+ compliant, and totally free of use ...

2) Anyway, i never said to Hendrick "hey, put that live cd into you mac and just see what hapend if you try to boot with" ...

3) Anyway again, PC and Mac computer are both builded around same architecture now, so ...

If users like Hendrick don't have any linux computer at home (or at friend's ?), would it be sooooooo stupid to try n°2 ???

Sorry for my english ^^

There is absolutely no need or benefit to boot from a Linux system on a CD to scan a Mac for malware. Especially when the engine you are recommending does not detect the software you're recommending it for.

Thomas A Reed wrote:

Especially when the engine you are recommending does not detect the software you're recommending it for.

here is a point where you missunderstood my advice to Hendrick ; i did NOT recommend the boot cd "especially and only" for Genieo, but for what Hendrick want to do : "immediately perform a full check of the mac to see if there is anything suspicious."

it is not my fault, Thomas, if when you read "anything suspicious" you understand "Genieo" 😉

neither if you don't see any advantage in performing a full check on an OS you are not running at the same time ................

My statements about the uselessness of using a Linux CD to scan your Mac for malware are not specific to Genieo. If you need to scan your Mac for any kind of malware for some reason, that is not a useful way of doing it, since there is no malware that cannot be detected by a live scan (assuming the engine you're using actually recognizes the malware in question). Further, the ClamAV engine is not the best one to use.

Besides which, any recommendation in this topic ought to apply to Genieo specifically.

all my apologies Mr IKnowEveryThing ...

if i undestand your words and your statements (that only talk about malware), then you are certain that Genieo does NOT contain any virus ? and can only be a malware ("at worse and nothing worse") ?

whaoooo, don't know how you made the challenge, but all my great congratulations !!!!!!! you have solved the first question of the topic -> What is Genieo ? a malware, of course ! evrybody except me knows that !

further (like you said ...) i think that opinon about AV efficacity is just like nose -> everyone has its own ...

further and finnally thanks to you, the topic can be marked as "resolved", and this sterile discussion can end ...

I don't understand a lot of what you're saying, and don't really think that the attitude is appropriate. I have actually played around with Genieo, back around the time this topic started, and there's no malware involved other than Genieo itself (which sounds like it may have crossed the line into malware itself). I have also tested a large number of Mac anti-virus programs, so I do have more than just another opinion on that topic. You may want to read:

http://www.thesafemac.com/mac-anti-virus-testing-01-2013/

Hello, I have to first admit that I am a philistine when it comes to understanding my computer technically, but I am wondering if someone can help me. I was wanting to download a script in PDF, it was indicated that I had to install Genieo to achieve this... so I did. I didn’t end up being able to achieve downloading the PDF but ended up with Genieo presenting itself on my desktop. I decided to uninstall it. Here’s where I feel really naive, I just dragged the icon from the applications folder and trashed it and also the install icon I found in the applications folder. I then ran Disk Utilities to clean up my mess. I had this result

Can anybody tell me what I do about this?