Can a Mac be Bugged?

[caveman_uk]

And it's possible to remove the password in Single-User mode - which gives you administrator access without asking for a password. Though you can disable single user mode if you're sufficiently paranoid - though I don't recommend doing so. Keep in mind, single user mode's only a risk if the person has physical access to the box - in which case you probably have more important things to worry about then your computer being hacked.

Or you could boot the machine in target disk mode.

 

[Analog Kid]

I thought Mac's were very very secure.

Don't confuse "more secure than Windows" with "very very secure". We've been seeing talk of exploits for a while now-- so far nothing has turned into a mass attack, but if someone had it in for an individual machine they could get in.

As said before, physical access makes things a lot easier.

If you don't think it's someone personally targeting you, it's possible that you installed something unclean and gave it admin access when you ran the installer...

'ps -aux' will give you a list of processes running, but you'll probably find a few things that are hard to identify and don't turn up on Google. Activity Viewer can help you figure out where it got launched from. Regardless, if the nasty was put there by anyone with even a little sophistication they'll have figure out how to hide it from ps or disguise it to look innocuous...

If you're really worried, about the best you can do is a clean install.

 

[NoOneButMe]

Or you could boot the machine in target disk mode.

There's a ton of ways you could gain access - You boot up with linux livecd, rip the /etc/passwd and decrypt it in windows if you wanted to.

If the person has physical access, then there's not much they wont be able to do if they know what they're doing and have the right tools to do it.