Virus or Hack on 10.3.9 - a first?

[AlBDamned]

Hi All,

Had some major internet problems as some of you may have read.

"Internet, mail & quark all failed"

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/122294/

However, I get in this morning and my G5 is on, email's working (after one slight change that had been tried several times over the last two days with no joy), all my apps are open and everything is back to normal. NOBODY has gone near it since I was the last to leave the office last night and it's not set to turn on at any given time.

I have read many times that OSX cannot get hit by a Virus, but this has all the hallmarks of one or a hack from somewhere at the very least...

 

[emw]

I have read many times that OSX cannot get hit by a Virus, but this has all the hallmarks of one or a hack from somewhere at the very least...

While the behavior does seem to be a little suspicious, the idea that your 1 Mac would be the first victim of an "in the wild" OS X virus seems a little far-fetched.

Perhaps you aren't the only one with access to the device after all? What was the fix you mentioned, by the way? I'd be interested to hear what made it all work.

 

[AlBDamned]

Yeah I'm not sure it is a virus, it's just the whole thing haas been exceptionally strange and even our head IT guy who runs several full OSX G5 server sites in the south, has never heard of anything like it before.

The 'fix' or the thing that made both internet and mail work again this morning was switching the 'ethernet' in system prefs: Network: Ethernet- to 'Automatic' as opposed to the name of my machine. However, this was tried yesterday and the day before but no joy so it's weird that today it worked.

It's also doubly strange that yesterday I could just see mine and my collegues macs and our 3rd scanning mac, yet I could not see our main server at all.

As part of the weirdness, I come in this morning and my computer is on, with all the apps running and I repeat NO-ONE has been near it. It then pulled in all my mail from Tuesday and Wednesday (from our server which it couldn't previously see) and then took just switching it to Automatic as said above, and all was fine again.

Sadly - mail is now acting up AGAIN, and my emails sent to me are being rejected and I cannot connect to the mail server for outgoing - but the internet is still fine...

Very, very strange and none of it explains how or why I came in on Tuesday and it wasn't working in the first place....

 

[emw]

Have you...

1) Repaired permissions? Long shot, but who knows.

2) Done a search for items created/modified on the day your system went down?

3) Dusted for fingerprints?

 

[AlBDamned]

This is worth adding:

Last Thursday I was using MSN messenger and Limewire (for Album art), and someone logged in to messenger called: "I'll break you mate!".

Not on my contacts list - never seen it again but weird all the same... Could be relevant to problems I've had, but because I use both of those programs very rarely I don't think so. Also because it was Thrsday and everything was fine Friday and Monday, it lessens the likelyhood.

At the moment prime candidate for all this if it's not external is the update to 10.3.9...

 

[AlBDamned]

Have you...

1) Repaired permissions? Long shot, but who knows.

2) Done a search for items created/modified on the day your system went down?

3) Dusted for fingerprints?

Permissions yes - didn't do anything as I do this weekly anyway.

Not done the search but will do.

Dusted for fingerprints - I'm thinking about blaming the cleaner.....

 

[andylane]

Sadly - mail is now acting up AGAIN, and my emails sent to me are being rejected and I cannot connect to the mail server for outgoing - but the internet is still fine...

Unless you run a POP/IMAP mail server on your own computer, this suggests that something is wrong with your email provider, and not anything on your computer. Assuming, that is, that by "rejection" you mean that the sender gets a "message undeliverable" message back. Rejection happens at the POP/IMAP server. What happens if someone *else* sends you an email? Not to panic you, but maybe your email account has been deactivated?

Am I missing something huge here?

 

[0098386]

This is worth adding:

Last Thursday I was using MSN messenger and Limewire (for Album art), and someone logged in to messenger called: "I'll break you mate!".

Not on my contacts list - never seen it again but weird all the same... Could be relevant to problems I've had, but because I use both of those programs very rarely I don't think so. Also because it was Thrsday and everything was fine Friday and Monday, it lessens the likelyhood.

At the moment prime candidate for all this if it's not external is the update to 10.3.9...

i wish i could remember the exact names, but one time a window popped up in messenger called 'Blocked Status 1' which had a very strange email address, then another time with an even stranger name, of which i cannot remember!

my guess is its just Mac Messenger being all buggy

 

[AlBDamned]

Unless you run a POP/IMAP mail server on your own computer, this suggests that something is wrong with your email provider, and not anything on your computer. Assuming, that is, that by "rejection" you mean that the sender gets a "message undeliverable" message back. Rejection happens at the POP/IMAP server. What happens if someone *else* sends you an email? Not to panic you, but maybe your email account has been deactivated?

Am I missing something huge here?

Was getting stuff through intermittently but then it locked up for ages trying to get to the server. Have deleted and re-entered my mailboxes but somewhere in the melee I've lost all the emails from January this year onwards (for good). Retrieved the 2004 ones in time and still have all the attachments thankfully. This is human error I admit (even though I did archive them but...) , but it adds to the happenings going on here!!

I too think I'm missing something huge - my brain can't quite deal with the fact that all this is going wrong in the very week when I need it to be on its best behaviour!

 

[bubbamac]

The 10.3.9 incremental update (throught Software Update.app) made my system, and Mail.app, unstable. Especially Mail.app.

If you haven't yet, download the combo installer for 10.3.9 from Apple's website, and use that. Make sure you repair permissions before, of course.

That helped me immensely. For a while, I felt like I was running a Windows machine after the 10.3.9 update - but the combo updater fixed all that. Whew!