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Snow Leopard and the Flashback Malware

I am visiting my elderly mother and (like an idiot) responded to a prompt to update Adobe Flash last night. I have checked for the presence of DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES per C|Net's article on how to detect and remove the Flashback malware and it is not present in Mac OSX, Safari or Firefox. Can I relax? Do I still need to completely disable Flash in Preferences? She does not see well and is trained to automatically update via Software Update for Mac.


Also, her computer is running VERY slow. Any ideas on how to troubleshoot the speed?


Thanks in advance for any help! Happy Mother's Day!


Marsue


Her iMac:


Model Name: iMac

Model Identifier: iMac5,1

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo

Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz

Number Of Processors: 1

Total Number Of Cores: 2

L2 Cache: 4 MB

Memory: 1 GB

Bus Speed: 667 MHz


Running Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Posted on May 12, 2013 2:14 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on May 12, 2013 2:18 PM

If you have installed the appropriate security updates then you computer is protected. See


Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection


An excellent link to read is Tom Reed's Mac Malware Guide.

Also, visit The XLab FAQs and read Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware.

See these Apple articles:


Mac OS X Snow Leopard and malware detection

OS X Lion- Protect your Mac from malware

OS X Mountain Lion- Protect your Mac from malware

About file quarantine in OS X


If you require anti-virus protection I recommend using ClamXav.


Mac OS X Snow Leopard and malware detection.

4 replies
Question marked as Best reply

May 12, 2013 2:18 PM in response to Marsue

If you have installed the appropriate security updates then you computer is protected. See


Helpful Links Regarding Malware Protection


An excellent link to read is Tom Reed's Mac Malware Guide.

Also, visit The XLab FAQs and read Detecting and avoiding malware and spyware.

See these Apple articles:


Mac OS X Snow Leopard and malware detection

OS X Lion- Protect your Mac from malware

OS X Mountain Lion- Protect your Mac from malware

About file quarantine in OS X


If you require anti-virus protection I recommend using ClamXav.


Mac OS X Snow Leopard and malware detection.

May 12, 2013 5:38 PM in response to Marsue

Marsue wrote:


I am visiting my elderly mother and (like an idiot) responded to a prompt to update Adobe Flash last night. I have checked for the presence of DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES per C|Net's article on how to detect and remove the Flashback malware and it is not present in Mac OSX, Safari or Firefox.

Flashback has been extinct for at probably nine months now and there have been no new infections for over a year, according to all the A-V labs.

I will read up on the malware detection and make ure that all is well!

Slow-downs are almost never the result of malware, and as others have said if OS X 10.6.8 is fully up-to-date it is protected against all currently known malware that can impact it.

Snow Leopard and the Flashback Malware

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