How do you know if you have malware?

And another so-call security expert who doesn't know the difference between a virus and a Trojan, worm or root kit. Try again.

I've never claimed to be a security expert. Can you tell me why I'm a "so called security expert" ? I really appreciate your kind and courteous attitude, by the way.

The sad thing is, you who do claim to be a security expert, are still not correct about this. Here is a proof of concept virus that proves macs are not immune to viruses.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1053737/macarena.html

I was referring to the person in your link as the so-called expert. I'm not one either by profession, but I at least know the difference.

An article from 2006? Really? For a proof of concept that was never released and has been patched against since then?

Try again, only try to find something current and actually active.

I'm not sure why you chose to bring this up in a discussion over eight months old where the OP never got back to us, but if you are looking for current information concerning the state of OS X malware, I highly recommend the Mac Malware Guide authored by a colleague of mine, which includes a catalog of all currently known malicious software and their status.

Beat me to it! I was just coming back to post the same link. Both yourself and Thomas are true experts on this stuff. Unlike the shyster at PC Magazine. It was funny to see how many responses he got noting none of the ones he listed were viruses, and how could he not know the difference.

There are some mac viruses hidden way underground.

Not just uncommon, there aren't any. Not one.

I hope you noticed this discussion is coming up on two years old, so few will read it.

jolosimo wrote:

There are some mac viruses hidden way underground.

If you are referring to a true OS X virus (malware that can infect and spread to other computers with no user interaction) then there are none that are known to the security community that monitors such things. There might be something on the shelf of a malware developer (or nation state) somewhere, but nothing "in-the-wild".

If you are referring to OS X malware in general as a virus (a common mistake) then yes, there is some, but the latest versions of OS X and it's applications are patched and protected by the anti-malware processes built into the latest versions of OS X from any criminal impact.

If you classify adware as malware, then yes there is quite a bit of that out there these days and users are not fully protected against accidentally installing such themselves.

Im not trying to scare anyone but you can get viruses on a Mac it's just very rare and not that common

Stephenjnr7 wrote:

you can get viruses on a Mac it's just very rare and not that common

Malware, yes, but not viruses, at least not yet. Please read what Kurt wrote more closely.

I can only presume you're making what is somewhat recently a very common mistake, or misuse of the word virus.

Virus is not a catch all term for software you don't or wouldn't want on your system. The catch all word is malware, which is short for malicious software. Malware means any of these as a group:

virus, trojan, worm, and some adware which has become more than just a great annoyance.

The rest aren't software related at all. Nothing needs to be installed on your computer for phony emails, text messages, and the current rash of web popups that claim your computer is infected with something. That's social engineering. The only requirement for those to work is for the user to fall for them.

Kurt,

I fell for it...I received an email from fed ex stating that there was a problem with my delivery. I thought it was legit because I had just placed an order on a legitimate website (walmart.com) so when then email indicated that the details regarding the problem with the delivery was attached, I downloaded it. It was identified as a zip file but when I downloaded, I saw that the actual extension was .js. so it was like detailszip.js. Okay so when I opened it, all I saw was code. I'm not a programmer, but I knew it was java script and it started off with var stroke=5557........ and then function qyu 212mug...

I am going to look it up or find a programmer to tell me, but I wanted to share this in case anyone else encounters something similar. If anyone knows about this, can you please post. If I find out what it means, I will come back to post.

Oh and here is the kicker guys...before I realized it was not legit, I responded to the sender stating that I could not read the email and could they please email me back? LOL jokes on me, I know! The only way I really figured it out was when the email came back to me. I also had not realized that the email was sent to an email address that is associated with my websites and not the email address that I used to order. That's when I put 2 and 2 together.

I have three degrees and feel as dumb as a bag of rocks right now.

*On my mac, I do have AVG virus protection and also Adware Medic. AVG identified three threats but I don't think they were related to this email. I ran adware medic after and it said everything was fine.

I'm just wondering if there is somewhere that you can run a check just for the script.

(I deleted the email and purged it. I also deleted ALL of my contacts and most of my emails.)

Any helpful feedback would be appreciated.

The only javascript malware that I'm currently aware of targets Windows computers, so I don't think you have anything to worry about.

You can upload it to VirusTotal to get an idea of what it might be and then see if any of the scanners can give you more detailed information on it.

I have constantly heard that Macs don't get viruses, but really, Macs have been infected by Malware, to detect malware, go onto a site that constantly gives you more links, if you click on the link, the malware should infect the outcome by forcing you to go to an advertisement, and also, Macs DO GET VIRUSES

No, they do NOT.

Cleary, you haven't read any other posts in this topic, or you wouldn't bothered to make such a provably false statement.