My Mac is hacked

(I don't use the trackpad as I developed RSI due to the considerable amount of time I used to spend building my database).

You may not use the trackpad but that does not mean it can't be one source of your many problems.

See this dramatically titled thread here and the ultimate solution.

HACKED! Someone just took control of my cursor while I was on the Internet! They started to open files and search throug…

Even a swollen battery can manifest itself weird cursor actions.

AdriennaZ wrote:

(I don't use the trackpad as I developed RSI due to the considerable amount of time I used to spend building my database). I am now on my 3rd mouse thinking it was mouse problems.

Doesn't matter if you use the trackpad or not, it's still there. If, for example, you have a swollen battery, it will still impinge on the trackpad and cause spurious inputs, regardless of whether you have another mouse connected or not. The same is true of most of the other possible trackpad-related issues.

So how you do explain files that have been moved.

A trackpad or mouse causing spurious inputs can easily do such things, and can easily fool people into thinking there is a purpose behind the random movements. Seeking patterns is a natural human tendency, which can sometimes cause us to see patterns where none exist.

Or the time (about 3.5 years ago) when a client contacted me and as I needed to review previous emails there was no content. All text had been removed.

Corruption in your mailboxes. I've seen this one myself before. No need to summon up a hacker to explain it.

Or my accounting program in finder that used to have an icon now has a black box?

Why would a hacker want to change the icon of your accounting program? The app may be corrupt, or it may have code to change the appearance of the icon that shows in the Dock and that code is no longer functioning properly on the version of Mac OS X you're running.

Ultimately, it doesn't seem we're getting anywhere with this. You seem to be rejecting potential solutions without trying them, because they don't fit the preconception you have developed about what is causing the problem, and so there's really nothing we can do for you here.

GHOSTS?

here's another twist on hacked mac behavior. so...last night i installed my first apple tv onto our secured wifi network. my girlfriend and i both have macbook pros as well which were also connected to the network.

as i installed channels on the appletv, i used the apple tv controller to navigate and visited websites as directed to enter the authorization codes. the wierd thing was that each time I navigated using the apple tv controller, wierd things started happening on both of our mac books.

itunes started playing different songs on each of our macbooks even though we hadnt touched them.

volume of the songs kept changing as though someone had remote control of both of our laptops.

our yahoo mail clients started scrolling up and down.

photobooth opened on her laptop and a photo she had just received 2 hours earlier opened on its own.

it feels like while using the apple tv controlle,our laptops are exposed.

No one else was on the wifi network except for us.

The other thing we discovered is now our chrome browsers are launching extra tabs with marketing offers when we open various sites including zillow, netflix, etx.

Thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

You were remote controlling your Macs as well as the Apple TV. Many Macs have an infrared receiver to allow remote control of music, movies, etc... if, for example, you have your Mac hooked up to your TV or stereo system for playing media.

According to Apple:

To prevent your computer from being controlled by any remote, click General, then click Advanced in Security & Privacy preferences. Then, select “Disable remote control infrared receiver.”

...excerpted from:

OS X Mavericks: Pair and unpair an Apple Remote

Thank you! We were really concerned that our network/macs were exposed while getting channels authorized for the apple tv.