Hacking question!

I recently moved out of my parents house. I was screwing around with Ichat, and opened up recent "file transfers". I noticed that 5 pictures from my laptop were sent to my brothers laptop. It was a transfer that said [email protected]'s-15-macbook-pro. I am unable to find a time or date of these transfers.

I have a password on my computer, and if i step away from my computer for a few seconds it prompts the password.

In order to find these pictures, he had to know where to look to get them, seeing i have thousands of pictures on my laptop.

There is not a time I have ever given my password out to ANYONE, nor have I ever allowed anyone to use my computer.

Is it possible he tapped into my computer over the network at my parents house? Where can I search to see if he has transferred anything else, or got access to anything else?

Do you think your brother is computer literate enough to have the means to do this? and with no date/time are you certain that you did not transfer the files yourself at some point? do you have access to the files that he "took" so that you can see if it is something you would send him or not? This would all go a long way to answering your question.

The Rabbit

first line of defense will be setting up firewall for your internet access,
apple menu > security > firewall on should get you protected.

The pictures that were transferred were pictures that I would have NEVER sent him, or anyone else for that matter, they were private. I would love to find a date and time of when they were transferred, i just do not know how.

Is he computer illiterate enough? I do not know, but he does have 3 macs and all he does is play on them, so Im guessing that yes he could possibly be, and he must be, because he transferred info from my computer to his own.

Firewall is turned on.

I see, could you not just ask your brother? If he managed to get passed a firewall and somehow navigate his way through your documents which you mentioned he would have no way of knowing where they were then you should most likely tell him not to do it again because there is not much else you could do to stop him

**** you sibling rivalry

The Rabbit

Only other solution i could give you is to keep all of your personal files on an encrypted drive. Shouldn't have any problems then. Hope this helps.

The Rabbit

It is easier to deal with your own brother than the real world hackers.

Perhaps I missed it somewhere above but do you have any of the options turned on in the Sharing preference pane? If so, which ones?

ycl1688 said:

It is easier to deal with your own brother than the real world hackers.

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I would much rather get hacked by my brother any day than real world hackers, at least then you can give the one responsible a seeing too

If you have logging turned on (iChat preferences) you'll be able to see iChat activity in Documents/iChats

Slydude said:

Perhaps I missed it somewhere above but do you have any of the options turned on in the Sharing preference pane? If so, which ones?

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It is worth turning not to share file option on.

Janrabbit said:

I would much rather get hacked by my brother any day than real world hackers, at least then you can give the one responsible a seeing too

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sure a dangerous world out there, protect yourself by any means necessary and do whatever you can till the cows come home.
Arm yourself to the teeth.

A simple way to test this would be to install Little Snitch and see what outbound connections are being made. Combine that with teh firewall and you should get a better picture of what's going on.

vansmith said:

A simple way to test this would be to install Little Snitch and see what outbound connections are being made. Combine that with teh firewall and you should get a better picture of what's going on.

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I used this. I dont understand any of it though.

Only thing being shared is Printer Sharing

Little Snitch should present a popup if something on your Mac is trying to connect to the outside world. Otherwise, you won't notice it. I suggested it as a way to test whether or not your brother had something sending content out (having no idea how good your brother is at this kind of thing, I covered all possibilities).

damask8 said:

Only thing being shared is Printer Sharing

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I was just curios as to whether file sharing or any of the remote login/management options were on. Printer sharing would not cause the behavior you are seeing.

ycl1688 said:

first line of defense will be setting up firewall for your internet access,
apple menu > security > firewall on should get you protected.

Click to expand...

Firewall does absolutely nothing to protect you from:

a. People with physical access to your machine or
b. People who have successfully guessed your password.

NOTHING.

People believe the firewall is this magical all-encompassing security device. It isn't at all, which is why it's off by default. Besides, even if a firewall DID have magical intruder-protecting powers, you're probably already on a (superior) hardware firewall via your router.