Mac Hacker?

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Sep 18, 2006
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Hello all,

been a long time since ive been here but I have a real problem.
A while back I noticed that my wireless internet was going really slow, so I reset everything and changed all the passwords on our 3 macs.

Today I needed my administrator password on the imac which I have used since changing it and it fails everytime.

I rebooted with the installation disks to reset the password and to my surprise I see there is an iphone that has a user account on my mac! We dont own an iphone. I changed his password and mine.

When i rebooted and went into system preferences to check everything was fine except that the mysterious user doesnt show up as a user here. What can I do? I work from home, all my work is on that mac, I dont want some little sh*t destroying everything. I need him off my mac!

Any advice greatly appreciated

(admin if this query is in the wrong place I apologise I didnt know where to put it)

cheers
guirigales
 

cwa107


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Location
Lake Mary, Florida
Your Mac's Specs
14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
Does your wireless network have any kind of security, and if so, what kind is it?
 
OP
G
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Hello
I have it set to WPA2Personal. Im using a name and some numbers not very long. BUT I did have all the macs to NO SYSTEM PASSWORD before as I shared files between two of them. What I dont understand is how a user account shows up when I use the system disc to reset the password and not in system preferences. Ive now switched off file sharing and Bluetooth (this used the default bluetooth password). How can I delete this account?

THanks
 

cwa107


Retired Staff
Joined
Dec 20, 2006
Messages
27,042
Reaction score
812
Points
113
Location
Lake Mary, Florida
Your Mac's Specs
14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
Hello
I have it set to WPA2Personal. Im using a name and some numbers not very long. BUT I did have all the macs to NO SYSTEM PASSWORD before as I shared files between two of them. What I dont understand is how a user account shows up when I use the system disc to reset the password and not in system preferences. Ive now switched off file sharing and Bluetooth (this used the default bluetooth password). How can I delete this account?

THanks


Bluetooth has an effective range of about 30 feet. Also, you should be relatively well protected by the fact that your machines sit in a private LAN, protected by a NAT firewall provided by your router. And of course, WPA2 is strong security. It's unlikely that the hacker (if it really was a hacker) would have penetrated that way.

My guess is that this happened while the machine was on another network (like at a free WiFi hotspot).

You can delete the account by going into System Preferences => Accounts and then select the extraneous account and click the '-' button.

Also, while you're in there, I would recommend going into System Preferences => Security. Go into the Firewall tab. Make sure 'Set access for specific programs and services' is set. Then go into Advanced and turn on Stealth Mode. You can also look at your firewall log to try to figure out when this breach occured.
 
OP
G
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HI

The account doesnt appear in System Preferences => Accounts. Just mine and GUEST which is greyed out. I cannot delete it with the minus sign.
Everytime I try to use a programme now it a login box appears saying its wants the keychain password. It doesnt recognoze my user password. WHat am I doing wrong?

Thanks
 

cwa107


Retired Staff
Joined
Dec 20, 2006
Messages
27,042
Reaction score
812
Points
113
Location
Lake Mary, Florida
Your Mac's Specs
14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
How are you detecting the presence of another account? All accounts on the computer should be listed there. Is it just that you're seeing another computer in the Finder Sidebar under the header "Shared"?
 

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