Computer Gurus - Help!

Tonight in the windmill thread WW suggested I go to Google Earth, and since I hadn't been there for a long time I decided it was a good idea. The site wanted me to download the program, so I did.

After it downloaded, I went to the Downloads folder to click/install it. That's when I got worried. I have a MacBook. When I plug in a camera, my iPhone, etc., it is listed on the left margin, with a kind of "equal" sign that I can click on. Well, on that screen was something/someone connected to my computer via FTP. I wish I would have written down the name, but the last name was something like Steinberg.

Have I been hacked? Is this one of those programs that steals passwords, etc? I clicked to disconnect it, and now I can't find it, so I'm 'assuming' it's gone. I do have Norton on my computer, but I disabled it a long time ago because it slowed the machine so much, and I felt Mac-safe. Not feeling so safe right now.

Suggestions as to what is was, and what I should do???

I've been in DR 2 months, and thank God I haven't done any online banking. Of course, I'm now dying to check my accounts, but don't dare.

Am I overreacting? Never have seen anything like that before.

Help!

Hi Robert,

It clearly said it was connected via FTP.

I'm on a Claro USB 'stick', in the middle of nowhere, probably very few computers anywhere near me [if any!!!], and the person's name was certainly not Dominican.

I'm so mad at myself for not writing down exactly what it said before I clicked "disconnect".

I'm running Norton right now, I had turned off the firewall because MagicJack wouldn't work with it. It found [so far] an attack [Named PortScan], applicaion: /mach_kernal, from an IP address in VietNam [172.43.1.135], which it has disabled.

Is this a concern?

It took 2 hours to run Norton - came up that my Mac was also infected with trojan.maljava. I googled it and it sounds very nasty. I'm thinking that might be what I stumbled on last night. ???????

From now on I guess I need to be a vigilant with the Mac as I am with our PC.

Be careful out there.

Robert said:

I have never seen or heard of this running on a Mac.
I also had a good look at Google and couldn't find this being an issue for Mac.

Are you sure the trojan.maljava wasn't a false positive. This sounds like typical Norton scare tactics!
I'm not sure of anything Robert. A box popped up during the scan and said computer was infected with that, and I clicked "repair" and it then marked it "deleted".

Nortons own site does not list this trojan effecting Mac OS.

Trojan.Maljava | Symantec

Are you running Boot Camp, VMWare or Parallels to run Windows on your Mac?
None of the above. I have no Windows anything on the Mac.


One thing you might want to do is turn on your Mac firewall, that will kill off the port scans etc,
I did turn the Norton Firewall back on soon as the scan was done.

Mac OS X 10.5 Help: Protecting your computer with a firewall

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info and the link Robert!

william webster said:

Uh-Oh.... I'm starting to feel guilty..:ermm:

Sorry Grace, I didn't mean to start anything.

I hope it works out.....:nervous:

Click to expand...

Hey, I'm glad it happened, I now have a clean machine. Otherwise I was vulnerable, and would have jumped into online banking soon as I returned home.

Everything happens for a reason.