Antivirus and Virus worry's -.-

Good afternoon, right I read the other day about the new virus's thats supposed to be spreading around that will affect iMacs, MacBooks etc. So being silly I went ahead and downloaded Sophos.

Did a scan and it found 3 virus's on what I can presume to be my external HDD (Time machine drive) It gave me the option to clean up but It said I had to delete the files manually. To cut a long story short, I couldn't find the files to delete so I tried ClamXav.

The scan never actually completed itself and since uninstalling this my iMac doesn't feel the same. Its really slow and when I try and resume what I was doing after its gone into sleep it just freezes causing me to press and hold the power button which I have never had to do.

I have disconnected my external HDD which seems to have made a difference. Now, if i format my external HDD and then redo the Time Machine backup this should in theory get rid of these viruses, however I have no Idea how to do this and Im worried something bad is going to happen. So if there is anyone that could help me out I would be VERY VERY grateful.

Mark

Mark112 said:

Good afternoon, right I read the other day about the new virus's thats supposed to be spreading around that will affect iMacs, MacBooks etc. So being silly I went ahead and downloaded Sophos.

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There are a number of trojans for the Mac. This is an important distinction because trojans are contracted by tricking the user into allowing the malware to be installed. Knowing the attack vector can help you protect the computer from its greatest threat - the loose nut behind the keyboard

No amount of anti-virus software (which has proven to be ineffective against this latest trojan) will protect the computer from a gullible user who is tricked into installing malicious software.

Did a scan and it found 3 virus's on what I can presume to be my external HDD (Time machine drive) It gave me the option to clean up but It said I had to delete the files manually. To cut a long story short, I couldn't find the files to delete so I tried ClamXav.

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What exactly did it find? Did you make any notes? This is important because in most cases, it will have detected Windows-specific malware, which is completely harmless to your Mac.

The scan never actually completed itself and since uninstalling this my iMac doesn't feel the same. Its really slow and when I try and resume what I was doing after its gone into sleep it just freezes causing me to press and hold the power button which I have never had to do.

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In my opinion, Sophos is a pretty craptastic product. How did you go about uninstalling it?

I have disconnected my external HDD which seems to have made a difference. Now, if i format my external HDD and then redo the Time Machine backup this should in theory get rid of these viruses, however I have no Idea how to do this and Im worried something bad is going to happen. So if there is anyone that could help me out I would be VERY VERY grateful.

Mark

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Reformatting is probably not necessary. Connect the drive and open Disk Utility. Select the volume from the left side and then click the First Aid tab. Run Verify/Repair Disk and Verify/Repair Permissions.

Thank you very much for replying so soon.

I uninstalled ClamXav not Sophos, I havent noticed any problems from Sophos so far.

I would feel better to reformat the HDD at least I know its a nice fresh backup. Should I just reformat it like a normal drive and then start a new time machine?

What kind of virus did you find with clamavx ?
Os X virus ?
Or windows virus ?
Are you dual booting with windows ?
Windows virus can not harm OS X

I didn't find any with ClamXav since it didn't actually finish the scan. I found 3 with Sophos which were Trojans and Malware, i can't find the details of them anymore since I unplugged my external HDD so I'm guessing that was the cause.

Even if your worried about the latest attack on Mac's, if you dl the latest Software Update and specifically the Java update then you have nothng to worry about.

Dont bloat your system with AV Crapware and surf safe, you will never have anything to worry about.

Cheers
PS ~ Good Reading http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/switcher-hangout/245728-official-antivirus-malware-firewall-faq.html

Thank you TattooedMac, thats pretty much the answer I was looking for

dobby said:

What kind of virus did you find with clamavx ?
Os X virus ?
Or windows virus ?
Are you dual booting with windows ?
Windows virus can not harm OS X

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Dobby:

In as much as there is no such thing as an OS X virus, he didn't and is not going to find one.

chas_m said:

Dobby:

In as much as there is no such thing as an OS X virus, he didn't and is not going to find one.

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As fare as we know .

dobby said:

As fare as we know .
But a OS that is totally bullet proof do not exist.

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Yes but OSX's main weakness is the user doing the unadvisable.

what about this
Widespread Virus Proves Macs Are No Longer Safe From Hackers - NYTimes.com

dobby said:

what about this
Widespread Virus Proves Macs Are No Longer Safe From Hackers - NYTimes.com

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Malware.

I do not mind how you like to call it malware , virus , rootkits .
But do not get asleep

Asleep? No I am wide awake and fix Windows systems for a living some with 100 Virus's and 1000's of malware. Do that daily.

That Flashback is not a true Virus. Sorry. Not saying a true virus will never be made for OSX, but so far, only a few trojans that require user action.

Does it really matter for the user that is system is infected with a virus , malware or a rootkit .

dtravis7 said:

Asleep? No I am wide awake and fix Windows systems for a living some with 100 Virus's and 1000's of malware. Do that daily.

That Flashback is not a true Virus. Sorry. Not saying a true virus will never be made for OSX, but so far, only a few trojans that require user action.

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I think the lines are starting the blur, to be honest. And I'm not sure that Flashback really is just a trojan. From what I've read, users can be infected just by visiting a bad webpage. It's more like a worm in that it exploits a vulnerability in Java.

Now that Apple has updated OS X Java to the current 1.6_31 release, it's pretty much a non-issue. But I think Apple needs to transition Java support for OS X over to Oracle and call it quits. 1.6_31 was out well over a month before Apple released it for OS X.

dobby said:

Does it really matter for the user that is system is infected with a virus , malware or a rootkit .

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Well, everything else is a subset of "malware". It matters in identifying the remedy, yes.