is my macbook pro secure?

[ibizaismyhome]

I have just had a dirty bust up with my ex boss.
I am sure he has got somebody spying on my computer.
What can i do to prove this, and to stop it.
Many thanks in advance.
L

 

[justperry]

I have just had a dirty bust up with my ex boss.
I am sure he has got somebody spying on my computer.
What can i do to prove this, and to stop it.
Many thanks in advance.
L

Is it your own?
Has your boss ever been on it?
If not and you did not enable remote access don't worry.

 

[hawk1410]

You are being overly paranoid, but just do a complete system reinstall to be sure

 

[justperry]

You are being overly paranoid, but still just do a complete system reinstall just in case

Are you serious or being sarcastic, hard to know.

If screen sharing is off or remote login is off there is no way he should reinstall, even if they are on he can go into system preferences to delete any rights other than he wants the one to have rights to.

 

[hawk1410]

Are you serious or being sarcastic, hard to know.

If screen sharing is off or remote login is off there is no way he should reinstall, even if they are on he can go into system preferences to delete any rights other than he wants the one to have rights to.

No, I was just making a joke

 

[justperry]

No, I was just making a joke

That's what I thought, just asked to be sure.

To the OP, don't be so afraid, this is not some kind of insecure ***** system, leave it to you what to replace the **** with.

 

[johnchawkins]

It depends....

It really does depend upon the situation.

Is the MBP yours? If it is and you have controlled what software was installed and how it is configured then you are probably safe. I'm new to OSX, but have been in Info Sec most of my career and I work for a company with over 30,000 employees. My experience is more from the Unix/Windows server and Windows client side, but I will say that most employers do set no expectation of privacy using company-owned assets. We have software installed on all client systems that monitor for certain types of data and user behavior (what web sites they access). Our group routinely scans employee computers (company owned) whenever managers report a potential issue. The process involves either capturing an image remotely and scanning the image or scanning the actual system. We also check internet activity routinely (we have systems that capture and log all outbound traffic and block access to most addresses that are not business-related). Yes, we have a huge amount of storage full of data. The last 90 days of activity gets stored on disk. Over 90 days goes to optical storage and then is stored in an offsite vault. The typical big oversight that I see most employees make is forgetting about their email. Our email is hosted on Exchange and all email can be reviewed at any time by management, legal, HR, Info Sec.

If you work for any company and signed an employment agreement, or use company-owned assets, do not expect any protection of your privacy when it comes to company-owned assets or when you are working. Some may think that I'm full of it, but believe that I am not - especially if you work in the government or finance business sectors.

 

[ibizaismyhome]

thanks

Thanks for putting my mind at rest.
Prevention is better than cure

 

[nanolife]

Thanks for putting my mind at rest.
Prevention is better than cure

I wouldn't think twice and reinstall the whole thing. I've seen so many BS happening and I don't trust anybody who touch my computer.

Remember there's a few keyloggers apps for Mac OS that works very fine and imperceptible. If you are afraid of anything, better safe than sorry.

Just my honest opinion.

 

[justperry]

It really does depend upon the situation.

Is the MBP yours? If it is and you have controlled what software was installed and how it is configured then you are probably safe. I'm new to OSX, but have been in Info Sec most of my career and I work for a company with over 30,000 employees. My experience is more from the Unix/Windows server and Windows client side, but I will say that most employers do set no expectation of privacy using company-owned assets. We have software installed on all client systems that monitor for certain types of data and user behavior (what web sites they access). Our group routinely scans employee computers (company owned) whenever managers report a potential issue. The process involves either capturing an image remotely and scanning the image or scanning the actual system. We also check internet activity routinely (we have systems that capture and log all outbound traffic and block access to most addresses that are not business-related). Yes, we have a huge amount of storage full of data. The last 90 days of activity gets stored on disk. Over 90 days goes to optical storage and then is stored in an offsite vault. The typical big oversight that I see most employees make is forgetting about their email. Our email is hosted on Exchange and all email can be reviewed at any time by management, legal, HR, Info Sec.

If you work for any company and signed an employment agreement, or use company-owned assets, do not expect any protection of your privacy when it comes to company-owned assets or when you are working. Some may think that I'm full of it, but believe that I am not - especially if you work in the government or finance business sectors.

It Depends

In some countries it's strictly forbidden to sneak inside your computer without your consent.
So, you might for instance browsing the net but where I am originally from, the company
is not allowed to monitor what you do, they can however look when they are physically there.

----------

I wouldn't think twice and reinstall the whole thing. I've seen so many BS happening and I don't trust anybody who touch my computer.

Remember there's a few keyloggers apps for Mac OS that works very fine and imperceptible. If you are afraid of anything, better safe than sorry.

Just my honest opinion.

Install little snitch and it will ask for permission to any outgoing connection before letting it through.

 

[sim667]

It Depends

In some countries it's strictly forbidden to sneak inside your computer without your consent.
So, you might for instance browsing the net but where I am originally from, the company
is not allowed to monitor what you do, they can however look when they are physically there.

Im agreeing with this. Some staff at my place ended up bringing in their own computers to work as work ones where pretty much unusable. One holiday period the IT head took all the personal computers away and attempted to circumvent their log in passwords to 'make sure no work licenses programs were installed' - which is totally illegal here.

I think he got a telling off and a half, but no-one reported him out of good faith he wouldnt do it again.

 

[nanolife]

It Depends

In some countries it's strictly forbidden to sneak inside your computer without your consent.
So, you might for instance browsing the net but where I am originally from, the company
is not allowed to monitor what you do, they can however look when they are physically there.

----------



Install little snitch and it will ask for permission to any outgoing connection before letting it through.

But the keylogger will still be there so why not just making a fresh install and get rid of any doubt forever?
The point is IF he is being watched or not, that's the main doubt here.

 

[Mrbobb]

Don't want to scare u. But did u read the article where a laptop rental company was turning the camera on to spy on its customers?

U too realize of course apps that tracks where u are is prevalent these days.

Depends how technically inclined is your ex or some hacker under his employ.

Re-install OS no big deal. It should be done once in a while anyway to rid of craps. Don't get online until u have done so. That's what I would do.

 

[justperry]

Don't want to scare u. But did u read the article where a laptop rental company was turning the camera on to spy on its customers?

U too realize of course apps that tracks where u are is prevalent these days.

Depends how technically inclined is your ex or some hacker under his employ.

Re-install OS no big deal. It should be done once in a while anyway to rid of craps. Don't get online until u have done so. That's what I would do.

Completely disagree, it's not a windows computer, I installed 10.0 on My first Powerbook around 2001 and always installed newer ones over it, never re installed and I am on a powerbook G4 on 10.5.8 and never had any problems.


Foxnews You believe them
And they were most probably windows laptops.

Keyloggers seem to exist for Macs but you need physical access to install those on a Mac, not only that, the OP still didn't answer My question, did that ex boss have access to his laptop?

 

[GGJstudios]

Don't want to scare u. But did u read the article where a laptop rental company was turning the camera on to spy on its customers?

That article obviously has nothing to do with the OP's MBP. The MBP camera cannot be activated without the light coming on, alerting the user that it's active.

Re-install OS no big deal. It should be done once in a while anyway to rid of craps. Don't get online until u have done so. That's what I would do.

There is no need to reinstall the OS, and no, it doesn't need to be done once in a while to get rid of anything.

 

[thedarkhorse]

If he is spying on you you could use it as a chance to screw with him, send him on a wild goose chase or something. You know, like that suitcase you buried 3 years ago in a national park that contains $190,000 in gold and silver jewelry, maybe you have an "email conversation" with an interested party and another with a friend who is going to help you go dig it up at x,x,x coordinates.

 

[Dark Void]

Yep, he's watching you get dressed.

 

[hfg]

If you are at a workplace on the company network, they may be watching what you are doing on your computer by monitoring the network requests ... all without actually installing something inside or plugged into your machine. You also probably go through a mail server which makes your email accessible to upper management if they request it (your employment contract probably releases much of your privacy expectations while at work).

 

[bogatyr]

If your laptop was owned by the company, they could have installed anything they wanted on it to monitor it. Depending on what they installed, there may be no way for you to know - even on OS X. But in this situation, you don't really have the right to wipe out the laptop (you don't own it) which would be the only way to prevent further snooping.

If you own the laptop - and no one has had it in their possession with an admin password, you're safe from anything being installed on the laptop. However, if you connect to the work network, they can intercept the information going between your laptop and other computers (i.e. web browsing/email/etc).

Also if your email is hosted by the company, they would also have access to that as well.

Legal or not, there are people in IT who snoop through things they shouldn't. Just look at the GeekSquad issue Best Buy had a while back, employees would work on customer computers and download all the images on the computer. Then at the store they would add all the nude/sex photos to a central repository for the staff to share.

Not everyone is like this, but sometimes the world has some ****** people in it.

 

[baypharm]

It Depends

In some countries it's strictly forbidden to sneak inside your computer without your consent.

This must be a joke!!! I mean c'mon....the government and law enforcement do it all the time.....

 

[justperry]

This must be a joke!!! I mean c'mon....the government and law enforcement do it all the time.....

Oh, and Apple build in special software hidden in the system and nobody knows about it

You are the one which is joking, Unix based systems are unlike windows much much more difficult to break into, ask GGJStudios, he can advise you better than Me but I am quite positive there is no single software available that anybody can install on a OS X system remotely without the consent of the owner/Admin of the machine.

The government of your country maybe but it's not everywhere like that.
They can however monitor your data to the outside of the world, but there are ways around that too if you are so paranoid.

 

[JD92]

Oh, and Apple build in special software hidden in the system and nobody knows about it

You are the one which is joking, Unix based systems are unlike windows much much more difficult to break into, ask GGJStudios, he can advise you better than Me but I am quite positive there is no single software available that anybody can install on a OS X system remotely without the consent of the owner/Admin of the machine.

The government of your country maybe but it's not everywhere like that.
They can however monitor your data to the outside of the world, but there are ways around that too if you are so paranoid.

I genuinely have no idea how *nix systems compare to Windows systems these days in terms of exploits, but that doesn't actually matter if his boss had physical access to an administrator account at any point in time.

 

[andymac2210]

Oh, and Apple build in special software hidden in the system and nobody knows about it

You are the one which is joking, Unix based systems are unlike windows much much more difficult to break into, ask GGJStudios, he can advise you better than Me but I am quite positive there is no single software available that anybody can install on a OS X system remotely without the consent of the owner/Admin of the machine.

The government of your country maybe but it's not everywhere like that.
They can however monitor your data to the outside of the world, but there are ways around that too if you are so paranoid.

While the government doesn't have direct keylogging access to your computer, it's a fact that they monitor every website visit, email, phone call and log it.

There's still a lot denialists that think we still have a free and open society in the west, but they're very wrong.

 

[MartyF81]

That article obviously has nothing to do with the OP's MBP. The MBP camera cannot be activated without the light coming on, alerting the user that it's active.

False. Yes it can. Check our PreyProject.com. It takes pictures of the "thief" without the light coming on letting them know they are being tracked.

Source: Me trying it myself.

 

[GGJstudios]

False. Yes it can. Check our PreyProject.com. It takes pictures of the "thief" without the light coming on letting them know they are being tracked.

That cannot work unless the OP actively installs the software or gives physical access for someone else to install it. No one can remotely access your Mac's cam without the light coming on.