Could I have a Keylogger on my computer?

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Hi

I tried to rip a CD (burned by a friend) into itunes a few days ago and it crashed before finishing.

My computer has been slower and glitchy ever since. Is it possible that an MP3 contained a keylogger or other malware which is now on my computer? If so, how would I find out?

I don't know what to look for in the activity monitor.

I am running snow leopard (if it matters).

Thanks in advance.
 
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G'day and welcome to the forums.

How much free space on the hard drive? How was the CD burnt - on a PC or Mac and using what software? Do you use Onyx or another maintenance utility?
 
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Very little free space on the hard drive - between 1-2GB.
CD was burned on a PC. Using iTunes (I'm guessing on that one).
Don't use onyx. I have little snitch but only the demo version.
 
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21" iMac 2.9Ghz 16GB RAM - 10.11.3, iPhone6s & iPad Air 2 - iOS 9.2.1, ATV 4Th Gen tvOS, ATV3
1-2 GB free space on your HD is the problem. We/Apple recommends having at least 20-25% free HD space for swap files and the system to do what it needs to do freely. 1-2 GB is just crazy. You need to backup to a Ext HD using TimeMachine or clone it with SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner and once you check all is well on the Backup start deleting stuff of your Mac.
If you don't your Mac will continue to crash and you won't go anywhere Guaranteed.

Oynx or MainMenu are Maintenance tools, LittleSnitch is a network Monitor and has nothing to do with fixing your Mac.

YOU NEED TO Backup on a Ext HD and delete some GB off your Mac until you have 20-25% minimum space free on the Macintosh HD before anything

Cheers
 
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I do have an ext drive, and will backup tonight & delete files. It just seemed weird to me that this cd/crash preceded the glitchy behavior.

Is there anything I can do to make sure no malware or keylogger was installed?
 
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Freed up 6GB. Still buggy. Any suggestions on what to search for? I'm downloading onyx now.
 
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8GB nowhere near enough. Drives need a minimum of 15% free space, so far a 250GB drive about 37GB. Not a fan of the snitch either.
 
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chas_m

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The short answer is no, you don't have a keylogger. Unless you let someone have your admin password and physical access to your machine so they could install it.

The problem is that your hard drive is FULL. That's the reason for the slow, glitchy behaviour -- it's relying on virtual RAM to try and get things done and there isn't any!

I would bet that if you restarted the machine and kept yourself to a limit of ONE program open at a time -- and each one properly quit not just closed when you were finished with it -- your machine would run a lot better even despite the fact that you have WAY too little free space left.

I'm going to hazard a guess and also suggest you clear all those icons I suspect you have on your desktop as well. That will also help improve the performance of the machine.

I personally do not subscribe to the "x percent of the drive" theory, but do agree that OS X needs a LOT of disk space to work at peak efficiency and performs very poorly with low disk space. I believe the best amount varies depending on what you're doing and your workflow, but even I would say 20GB at a minimum is a good idea.

Finally, to quote Apple: don't pirate music. I'm not judging anyone who's interested in discovering new music to buy, but pirated MP3s are among the many ways malware can get installed on a machine (PCs are waaaay more susceptible to this than Macs, but even Macs can get some forms of malware) so its best to just avoid them and support the artists in other ways. These days I use iTunes to listen to and find new artists, and buy the physical CD or the download depending on whether I'm impressed with the whole album or just want a song or two.
 

Slydude

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Have to agree there. Obviously we can't give you a hard and fast rule about which files might be removed to create additional space/ Other than the required system files different users will have different needs for the data needed on the main drive. You might give this blog post a read. It mentions some tools that can help you identify files that could be removed.

BTW what kind of Mac is involved here? Notebooks running 10.7 and higher that have Time Machine active store backups on the hard drive any time the backup drive can't be found. Some utilities report this space as used even though the OS deletes the backups as more space is needed.
 
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Thanks for your replies.
This is a MacBook Pro, but I'm running snow leopard (10.6) so I don't think the time machine backups are an issue.

I keep all video files and much of my music on another drive already, and am working on getting more space available on the drive.

Since this issue started suddenly, I was concerned that the files/disc in question could have contained a virus of sorts. The tracks were not pirated, for what it's worth.

Is there any reason the slow glitchy behavior would have started suddenly like this, when I've been running with less than 5GB free space for a while now?
 

bobtomay

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pure coincidence

And once you get some space freed up on that drive, would suggest you replace it with a new larger drive.
Or just get it backed up and replace it - with Snow Leopard, would recommend a bootable backup with SuperDuper or CCC.
Then you can just clone back to the new drive.

If you're going to continue using that drive, you would definitely see a big improvement running a defrag also - but, you can't even do that properly until you free up some space.
 
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chas_m

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I agree with Tom -- this is one of the rare cases where I would actually suggest doing a "defragging" operation (my preferred method is the clone-nuke-pave-cloneback, but whatever).
 

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