Q: hackers

send a screen shot.

I smell bologna, and not the working mans T-bone type, it sounds like the full of type.

It is highly likely you were NOT hacked, hacking a mac comes with some inherent difficulty. From what you mention it sounds like adware or a scam page or something else.

see this document by forum contributor John Gault regarding adware

Phony "tech support" / "ransomware" popups and web pages

you may also send an Etrecheck report in this thread for further analysis of your system.

www.etrecheck.com

flash is not a necessary evil but some web pages still use it and demand it, the inherent problem is since it's popular many fraudulent websites will tell you to download flash and direct you do a phony download.

flash should only be updated from here

https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

any website that directs you to it's own player or a previous versions needs to be avoided like the plague.

you have 4GB RAM which is enough to run El Captian but as you muti-task you will begin to see degradation in system performance. You have an i7 CPU which is advantageous, if you added 8 or 16 GB RAM (apple officially supports 8 in that system but other users state it will run with 16) you would see overall performance benefits.

While I prefer Safari to Chrome (two years ago you would have never heard that from me BTW) I wouldn't tell you to get rid of it, but you may wish to try it for yourself and keep Chrome on your system in the event you need it or prefer it, but some users have stated Chrome on Mac is very RAM intensive and others have said that's conjecture. As for mail I prefer the web client over mac mail but mostly because my ISP is terrible and I'm on multiple systems from moment to moment so again it's a matter of preference.

you do have remote desktop enabled on your system. unless you (or someone you trust) need remote control you don't need this on, and you can always turn in on later if you do.

>System Preferences>Sharing

go to remote login

uncheck it.

go to Remote Managment

uncheck it.

while this does not "invite" hackers into your system having it on it does not hurt to remove it from startup if you don't need it.

AdmitOne seems to be a torrent application that allows you to watch copyrighted material illegally so thats not something I would want on my computer, and I can only guess how legitimate the program is so if you are worried about dodgy activity thats something that I would trash, not only hackers but the RIAA and the FBI could harass you or your ISP could report you which evidently happens to people I talk to who use these type of torrent expediters.

I would seriously consider the following

Backing up your computer with Time Machine

Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac - Apple Support

verifying your existing software and hardware will run in 10.11 then clean install to 10.11.5 which has additional security OS 10.9 doesn't, then restore your user data with the backup. Also any possibility of a residual problem on your current OS will be addressed by a clean install.

upgrading your RAM to take advantage of the CPU, you could do 6GB and keep one of your existing RAM chips or go to 8 or 16. I recommend OWC Computers, they are very mac savvy and a number of us here have had good success with them.

Get rid of that torrent app before it causes a problem, which one way or another it likely will.

Press the reply button on any post you wish to reply to, that is why it is there

feather6868 wrote:

 

hi csound1, level 8 this is one of the reasons that some of us that are new to apple computers hesitate to hit that reply button because of answers like this... I wanted to know if there was a way to reach out so someone like Jimmy who was kind enough to reply and help me when no one else did.  I wanted to know if there was a way to reply to someone other then this reply button to reply only to the person that replied to me. I'm a very nice person csound1 and that wasn't very nice and I wanted to let you know that. feather6868

What you want to do is counter to how community help forums work. All users benefit from the advice provided to each question. Besides, we are users like you contributing here. Providing private contact information could lead to overwhelming a user not to mention opening up that user to spam and phishing.

feather6868 wrote:

 

I wanted to know if there was a way to reach out so someone like Jimmy who was kind enough to reply and help me when no one else did. 

Your initial post was up for less than 10 minutes before you got a reply, so I'm not sure why your inferring that you weren't getting any help.

You can do two things here: you can post and you can reply. There is no private messaging function.

You might also keep in mind that this is a user-to-user forum. Being unpleasant to someone who tried to be helpful by answering your question is not always the best way to go about things. If you don't like an answer you get, either just say "Thank you" and move on or, if you're unable to do that, ignore it. This is also a public forum. Everyone who is a member can read and respond to all the posts. You don't get to pick and chose who gets to reply.

Best of luck.

There are a few things I see in your report that I find troubling. The most important by far is that you are not using the free Time Machine Application to make Backups. If you have some other mechanism that is making a Trusted Backup by some other means, that is great. But you need a Trusted Backup.

Apple provides some free software, you can buy different software, but you need to buy a large drive (2.5 to 3x the size of what needs to be saved) and start doing Backups immediately. Not doing so is a decision to NOT save any of the files on your Mac, because "Any Drive can fail at any time."

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It is VERY troubling to see these two files (that have to do with Sharing) that are corrupted:

System Launch Agents: (What does this mean?)

    [loaded]    com.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist - Invalid signature!

    [loaded]    com.apple.screensharing.MessagesAgent.plist - Invalid signature!

I recommend you remove those files. It is a Multi-step process because they are likely "in use".

First, move both of those files to the Trash.

Perform a Restart, which will mark those files as no longer in use.

Then, empty the Trash.

If needed, they will be recreated (and hopefully in their proper, signed form). Leaving them as is could be an indication that you are already allowing unauthorized access to your Mac.

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if you ever need to clear your Boot Drive and re-Install to fix these and similar problems, your Trusted Backup will be required, which feeds back to my first concern.

Lacking other symptoms, I do not suggest that erasing your drive and re-installing MacOS is necessary at this point.

But not having a Trusted Backup leaves you with less room to maneuver. In a few weeks you will have many more files that you would not like to lose.

If you have an Apple store available, Apple will allow you to make an appointment and present all your equipment for an evaluation and advice. These visits are provided free of charge, regardless of warranty status.