Queries about virus in Mac

tygb wrote:

What is the basic difference between a virus , adware and a malware

Lawyers. 🙂

Adware is published by real, legitimate companies. They have a legal team that makes sure they stay just inside the limits of what is considered "legal".

These are all software that installs without your permission or by trickery. They use your machine and network resources for their own purposes. Legitimate software is the opposite. Legitimate software empowers you to do more with your machine and network resources.

how to know that the Mac is infected by virus itself ,

You have to have some software that can detect it. If you know what to look for, you might be able to tell if you have an adware infection. But if you're not too savvy about those things, then you can't tell.

do malware bytes anti malware remove virus or even etrecheck .

MalwareBytes will remove all known Mac viruses, at least as far as I know.

EtreCheck isn't technically an antivirus app. It just lists all software on your machine and flags those that it knows are malicious or those that it doesn't know anything about and that act malicious. I don't have the resources of a big company like MalwareBytes. I am not able to track each and every variant of each type of malware. EtreCheck can disable the malware and render it harmless, but it can't completely remove it.

To be fair, Apple's built-in anti-malware software will also detect and remove malware. Unfortunately, Apple's built-in software does very little against adware.

if a website is programmed with malicious contents and you view that website and click on some links possibilities are to get virus as you have given permissions to Mac to download that software .

Not quite true. There are a number of security layers built into macOS. In order to install malware, the end user has to really be determined to install it. Unfortunately, adware and malware developers are pretty good at trickery and baiting users.

And if a new user account is created will virus will be removed from Mac

The only way to remove malware is with some kind of uninstaller, such as an anti-malware app. Creating a new user account will not remove it.

what are the names of folders in Mac where they are hidden

There is no way to tell. They are always different. They often use random names.

do virus replicate

If you want to get really pedantically technical, the difference between a virus and other types of malware is the ability of a true virus to self-replicate. But just using the word "virus" is a bad idea. If you notice, I avoid it whenever possible. Because of that pedantic technical difference, there are too many people who say Mac viruses don't exist. Technically that is true, but not useful.

what precautions must every Mac user must take

Keep your Mac updated. Don't disable your security. (I have to specifically point this out because many people do just that. Maybe they believe what they have read on websites written by malicious and/or incompetent people who instruct people to disable their security, or maybe they are trying to pirate software.)

Avoiding adware is a little bit more difficult. You have to make sure that anything you install is legitimate. If you downloaded the software from a site that hosts ads, then the software is likely going to install more ads. The more ads you find on the place you get the software, the more likely you are to install adware.

1. A virus spreads on its own and infects other files. Adware needs to be manually installed and doesn't. Malware covers both of these, as well as other types, such as worms.

2. Watch for odd behavior or unexplained slowness, or run a tool.

3. No. Mac OS X malware is present at the system level.

4. It depends on the malware.

5. See #1.

6. Avoid downloading software from sources other than the Mac App Store and the developer websites.

(160282)

tygb wrote:

How do they use network resources to get these malicious softwares installed in Mac and what tricks are played , do they capture network packets as networking is a vast subject.

I was referring to the goal of malicious software, not the method of infection. They want to install software on your machine so that they can use your machine for their own business. Once the malware is installed, they can either try to scam you out of money or just use your computer for bitcoin mining, file sharing, or scamming advertising networks.

Are virus in forms of .exe , .vb as mentioned in this article File types blocked in Gmail - Gmail Help

And what are the forms of malware and adware files , and how to distinguish them .

That is just a simplistic blocking filter. .exe and .vb are file extensions on Windows. They are not viruses. A virus could have any kind of extension, either on Windows or the Mac. It is not possible to distinguish them.

But it removes only adwares and malware , as malware can be collection of virus see this article https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/mac-help/what-is-malware-mh27449/mac

Don't get hung up on terminology. It is all the same.

It means in a very rare situations a virus can be installed in Mac .

The primary reason why Macs are immune to viruses is because there are relatively few Macs in use. The way people tend to use Macs is not usually useful to virus developers. Therefore, it makes little sense to put much effort into the self-replicating behaviour that makes a piece of malware a true "virus". It makes more sense to use other strategies like randomization or social manipulation.

And what securities are added to protect from them , can virus or malware break these securities that is not yet cleared to me , is it a myth .

I think one myth that needs to be busted is the idea that malware can break security or do sophisticated things like network packet capture. It is certainly possible for malware to be sophisticated, but it rarely is. Malware is often the most simplistic and rudimentary software on your machine. Again, it makes no sense to distribute sophisticated Mac malware. That would be a wasted effort. It is better to have a simple piece of adware but distribute it more widely on illegal file sharing sites. That will result in faster malware propagation than any Mac virus could accomplish.

The human is always the weakest link in the security chain. All those layers of built-in Apple protection don't mean anything when users disable them so they can install a pirated version of EtreCheck, to use a real-world example. And if the website says that you need to install a new version of Flash, or a special codec, for that HD version of Infinity Wars, many people will be happy to install. Of course, they won't get the movie. So they keep searching and keep installing more malware. This is how Mac malware gets installed in virtually all cases.