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Ask HN: scan Macbook / OS X machine for malware

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Re: Ask HN: scan Macbook / OS X machine for malware

#13
post #6
post #4

Time machine backup then reinstall OSX. Then be wary about what applications and utilities you reinstall. I would wipe the router and reinstall that just in case.

It's possible that the backup could carry over malware depending on the type of malware.

Possible, but unlikely.

Has any such malware been seen in the wild (by creditable sources) as oppose to just proof of concept?

Re: Ask HN: scan Macbook / OS X machine for malware

#14

When you say you're getting a warning from Google, do you mean Google Search? If so, I've encountered a number of mundane things that produce a warning and require a captcha to continue. For instance, if I fire off a bunch of queries using the "site:" modifier.

Yes, Google Search. I think I'm just being paranoid. This happened to me before, but given that someone just got my credit card number and I have no idea how, I was afraid that my computer was infected with some sort of malware.

Re: Ask HN: scan Macbook / OS X machine for malware

#15

> I recently got a couple of times a warning from Google while using the web from home saying that there was "Unusual traffic from your computer network" How/when is warning being communicated to you?

It happened to me while I was on my home network a google search from Firefox. Google redirected me to a page with the message "Unusual traffic from your computer network" and asked me solve a captcha. I tried to search again (without solving the captcha) and the warning went away.

Re: Ask HN: scan Macbook / OS X machine for malware

#18
If you have a spare computer/laptop, then you can watch the traffic on your connection between laptop and router (wireshark or any other tool that can listen to traffic in promiscuous mode). You can probably try it on your laptop as well though sophisticated malware/virus is theoretically able to "hide" it from you. Hopefully, traffic analysis can help you to identify the problem.
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