Sophos detected 3 threats on my iMac (Maverick OSX 10.9.5) but clean up failed. Any idea how i get rid of them please? 1 is Malware the other 2 Trojans. Thanks
iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)
What are the names of these Trojans and Malware?
Thanks for your interest CSound & sorry I couldn't get back sooner. These are the full details from Quarantine Manager:
Date Threat Filename Action Available
2 Feb 2015 Troj/Zbot-Goy notification - the_royal_ban Clean up failed
2 Feb 2015 Troj/Agent -AIRO sale 2014-12-08_8704... Clean up failed
2 Feb 2015 Mal/Phish-A e document..html Clean up failed
I did have a look at a 'manual' for sophos but couldn't make sense of how to go about trying to rid something if the automatic detection / clean up process didn't work.
Any ideas?
Thanks
The first two are (surprise, surprise!) Windows only malware. Most likely email attachments. The last is also in an email, which it tells you, and isn't any kind of threat at all unless you make the mistake of responding. It's a phishing attempt. On their own, they can do absolutely nothing. Phishing emails require that the user fall for whatever they're trying to get you to respond to and do it.
As Kurt said, they are no threat.
Very helpful to know that & thanks very much to both yourself & CSound for your input & help. Much obliged & relieved.
The largest threat to the safety of your Mac at the present time is having Sophos installed on it
Thanks Allan - suggestions?
RMH1405 wrote:
Thanks Allan - suggestions?
For what?
You do not need any antivirus software, the negatives of running some outweigh the gain, if any.
Paranoia probably. I had a PC before the Mac & my whole system was hacked. The hackers mimicked my main bank log on page & I was within a whisker of falling into the trap. It took days of password changes, resets, change of bank & investment details & I'm scared to death of it happening again. Apple themselves now say their systems aren't 100% virus proof, hence my concern. Your comments are reassuring however. Thanks again.
I would like to know where you heard Apple say that their system is not 100% virus proof.
Just from an Apple fundi originally Allan & then there was commentary in the technological sections of the financial press some months ago. Whether right or wrong it still is substantially safer than PCs so thats good enough for me.
It would actually be prudent of Apple to say that OS X is not 100% virus proof because there's no way to predict the future with any kind of certainty. To date, there has not been, and still isn't an actual virus for OS X. Were Apple to make a statement that OS X was 100% virus proof, and the day comes someone actually manages to create a virus that works, they could then be open to lawsuits from all sorts looking to make a quick buck by using the statement against them. "See!!! They said 100%. They lied!"
There are plenty of Trojans, but as that type of malware requires, you must install it somehow yourself. Unlike a virus, which spreads without user interaction.
GGood to know Kurt and it obviously makes sense. How does one know if to delete all Trojans that are detected? Is it possible the act of deleting the
GGood to know Kurt and it obviously makes sense. How does one know if to delete all Trojans that are detected? Is it possible the act of deleting the Trojan is exactly what is needed to activate it?
What type of Trojan you may encounter depends on what "activates" it. If you go back far enough (think MS-DOS on old PCs), not only did you have to download the Trojan, you had to choose to run it. At one time, someone had released a Trojan of the very popular PKZIP app. It didn't zip or unzip anything. The person who released it to bulletin boards, did so as a version number that hadn't been released as a real version yet, so everyone thought it was a new, legitimate version. I can't remember what it did when you ran the app.
Currently, most known Trojans are obtained in these two most common manners:
1) Illegal software downloads. These contain the nasty ones like keyloggers, back doors, etc.
2) Legal software from sites like Softonic, C|Net's download.com and others. These aggregate sites where you can pick up all kinds of software to try have been adding extra installers to just about everything you download from them. Essentially, almost 100% of these unwanted additions are adware. Harmless, but greatly annoying. Especially the more aggressive ones that put so many adds on the screen, and so heavily tie up your Internet connection retrieving ads that your entire system slows down.
Either of these when installed are immediately active.
Sophos detected 3 threats on my iMac but clean up failed. Any idea how i get rid of them please? 1 is Malware the other 2 Trojans. Thanks
