Yes, Mac can be attacked (long)
For six years I was perfectly happy with my iMac (Tiger, I think), kept upgraded the OS..
Then it was not enough. Sites of financial institutions warned me that I needed to upgrade my browsers (Firefox and Safari). Had to download the new Skype but could not open it. New Quicken needed a new OS.
So at the beginning of the year I upgraded to El Capitan. Was not happy with it, but managed to upgrade all the applications.
And now, in the past few weeks, thing were not behaving. Pages would all of a sudden increase to fill the whole screen. I could not "grab" the page at the lower right corner to shrink it. And I could not move the page around by the black top. It happened mostly on DU (I don't visit that many pages on a regular basis) and, when I would exit, also on Yahoo.
And then last week it happened on my Mac Mail. And there I could not even see the red dot on the top left to close the page. Had to force quit it.
So decided that it was time to get a new iMac.
I have both a flash drive and an external drive where I save my files, mostly financial. Just drag them. But on Monday morning could not even do that. Had to keep attempting until I finally succeeded.
I took the old iMac and paid for data migration, and got the new one yesterday. Yes, it is wi-fi, also the keyboard and the mouse.
Not me. All the externals - extended keyboard, mouse with a ball, USB port, external drive, Internet cable - all were on my desk ready to be connected. Oh, and I purchased an external disc drive.
Except for the printer. I would have to install the software via a CD (was glad that I got the disc drive). As I found out that that printer needs a Power PC - which the old computer had but not this one, spouse suggested that software could be download.
This was the first mistake. The printer is a Brother and, in hindsight, I kinda remember that one has to go to Brother-USA site. Went to Brother site, lots of printers there and, I thought, I dowloaded the software. Instead, I got several programs that would "clean" the Mac. I still do not think that any malware came with it, Just a scam.
Next, I got a new Microsoft Office that I had to log and to enter the key figures.
In between, I did visit DU and that full screen did happen again. I also saw the beach ball..
And here it is why it is so important to carefully look at the URL of the companies that appear after one enter the name in Yahoo or Google. I was directed to go to office.com/setup. There was a long list of links. I skipped anything that did not have the name office, or microsoft and clicked on one. I was immediately faced with an image of the "key" card to enter the numbers - five groups of letters and numbers. It opened in another page which said there was a problem, even though the key was OK. And was given a number to call.
In hindsight, there was nothing professional in that page but I was surprised. A brand new computer? The person who replied, and got me to hit a link to give him entry to my computer said that I was hacked! That my network was hacked and thus having a new device should not matter. He was going to fix it. Are you from Microsoft? I kept asking. Yes, and we are the specialists who would fix that. He even "opened" a plain text window which showed that there was "no protection." Apple provides its own protection he said. My IP address has been stolen and is already spread around the globe. I would take two hours to fully clean it.
I was suspicious but was not sure what to do. Visiting DU earlier and still meeting the same observation - a full screen with no ability to resize - I was willing to believe him.
But spouse did not. Ran to a different room using a cell phone to call Apple. The Apple person said this did not make sense. I was on a speaker phone and the thief asked: oh, you are talking to Apple? I don't remember what he said I just got his phone number, name and hung up.
The Apple guy suggested to download a program called Malwarebytes, got it for 14 days free trial. Opened it and within 9 seconds it found three major events that it cleaned. We also looked at the system folder - yes I let Apple monitor my screen - and he said that it looked OK, did not find any telltale icons in the system folder. Restarted the computer and the scan was clean.
I still had the "repair" site in my browser history and the Apple guy looked and, of course, there was nothing professional about that page. He said that he may forward the phone number to the FBI.
The strange thing, when I googled the two numbers: 1-855-769-6222 and 1-888-267-6495 they appear as coming from repairing software..
And today I visited Microsoft Office again. I actually typed the URL into the URL window, did not ask Yahoo or Google. The page opened as Office, with, yes, the same logo as the box, but nothing about Microsoft. And, I had to go to my account. Don't have one. So I called the tech support to make sure that this was not another scam.
Got someone to help me. Talked for an hour. Yes, had to open an account before I could key the numbers. Had to get security codes emailed to me and then - this really pissed me - another security code texted to me. Of course, my landline could not get a text. Yes, both my spouse and I have flip phones. Mine was in another room, another floor. But spouse had one and finally got tired of the going around and we gave the number and got the text. (In hindsight since i was on the land line I could not have got a text..)
Yes, she too got permission to get into my computer and worked with the screen. Installing everything took forever. And finally I opened existing documents in Word, Excel and Powerpoint. I was with her on the phone for more than an hour!
Spouse is also going to download that Malwarebytes and I think I will pay for it.
Again, why I believed the scammer was because earlier on DU I found the same behavior.
Could DU contain an under the surface malwear?
So far today, no problem.
But as was posted here recently, everything on my computer is hardwired connected to the peripherals.
Long, but hope some help.
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