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My IMac has been hacked!

A

APPLENEB

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 3, 2012
2
0
Ok, I am officially freaking out! About a month ago, I was clicking around on my hard drive and looked at the files that had been accessed in the last week. To my surprise ALL of my very private uploaded pics had been accessed. At first, I thought it was my roommate because I was at work during the times the pics were opened. However, just yesterday I checked to see if those photos had been opened again... They had, and they were all opened just 2 minutes before I checked! There's no doubt someone has hacked into my computer and I feel completely violated. What are the steps I should take? To prevent this from happening again and maybe to find the perpetrator(s)?
-Buggin out.
 
I'd check Time Machine updates if they are near the same time as the files were accessed.

Also do you have screen sharing or file sharing enabled in System Preferences-> Sharing

If so, then anyone with a Mac (and knows your password) can remote in to your computer. Look for an extra icon in your menu bar that looks like a monitor screen.
 
It could be Time Machine... or, someone with another Mac, connected via FireWire, started yours in Target Disk Mode and accessed your files.

There are several steps to choose from to prevent this from happening.

Or, you installed some doubtful software from one of those 'websites' and installed a trojan on your iMac. Beware of weird named Video Players, and special website access programs, like many porn emails want you to download and install.
 
APPLENEB said:
Ok, I am officially freaking out! About a month ago, I was clicking around on my hard drive and looked at the files that had been accessed in the last week. To my surprise ALL of my very private uploaded pics had been accessed. At first, I thought it was my roommate because I was at work during the times the pics were opened. However, just yesterday I checked to see if those photos had been opened again... They had, and they were all opened just 2 minutes before I checked! There's no doubt someone has hacked into my computer and I feel completely violated. What are the steps I should take? To prevent this from happening again and maybe to find the perpetrator(s)?
-Buggin out.
Click to expand...
What makes you think your photos have been opened? The chances of any average user having their Mac hacked is ridiculously remote, unless you've given someone physical access to your computer.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

If someone is looking at your photos, it's probably someone you know. Unless you have some real special or top secret pics, who else would want to see them? Any other files or things "looked"at? I think if you figure out who would want to see your photos you can backtrack to then see who might have had access to your PW or Mac ..
 
How were you checking that they were "opened"? With what? iPhoto, Finder, or something else?
 
derbothaus said:
How were you checking that they were "opened"? With what? iPhoto, Finder, or something else?
Click to expand...

I know you can highlight files and Right Click->Show View Options and you can check Date Opened as option to be shown within Finder along with Date Created and Date Modified.
On another note, hitting the spacebar to quick view a file does not mark the file as opened.

Wondering if this is how he is seeing when the files were accessed.
 
Same thing happened to my brother when he went to school. We had our iMacs checked to share everything between us and he forgot to uncheck them when he left.

Many of the students (Mac users) in his dorm made jokes, but seriously telling him they could access everything on his computer haha.....
 
Sounds like a Sharing issue, check your Sharing preferences.

:apple: menu > System Preferences > Sharing > File Sharing
 
Turn timemachine off (if its on, and/or your network connection), turn every sharing option off and wait... see it the issue still occurs.
 
mmomega said:
I know you can highlight files and Right Click->Show View Options and you can check Date Opened as option to be shown within Finder along with Date Created and Date Modified.
On another note, hitting the spacebar to quick view a file does not mark the file as opened.

Wondering if this is how he is seeing when the files were accessed.
Click to expand...

These dates can be notoriously not right. That's why I was asking.
 
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