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MSN Virus?

C

chocolate632

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 27, 2007
310
0
Hey Guys, im not sure whats happening here, but I think my mac has a virus! This is how the story goes:

I was at my cousins house one day and he was signed into msn (he also has a mac) when my msn sent him a link that was something along the lines of username.msn.live.photos or something like that. I immediately called home, told them to turn on my computer, and accept a screen-sharing request. I then uninstalled msn and he didn't get that link again. When I got home, i installed adium and thought that everything was fine until someone sent me a message saying "That link you sent me didn't work"!!!!! Meaning I must have infected that guy too!! I really need to stop this thing, and I can't find any solutions for mac, just PC. Does anyone know how to get rid of this 'virus'? I promise, i won't click on anymore links :)
 
chocolate632 said:
I know its not a virus, but what is it then?
Click to expand...

If you know it is not a virus, then why put virus in the title and call it a virus in your original post?

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
I originally thought it was a virus, or some kind of malware or something. I was reading some more threads and I just remembered that I entered my password into a site that was originally sent to me, meaning the hackers now know my msn password, so I changed it. Should I change my password for all my other accounts?

My MSN email is formatted like this: word1_word2_word3@hotmail.com
while all my other accounts have this email: word1word2word3@aol.com

Should I bother changing the passwords to all my accounts? I mean, could the hackers see that these two emails are associated and try to use the same password to hack them?
 
chocolate632 said:
Should I bother changing the passwords to all my accounts? I mean, could the hackers see that these two emails are associated and try to use the same password to hack them?
Click to expand...

Anytime you KNOW a password got compromised, you should change all your passwords.
 
how about if i change the password to something similar, will they try guessing the pass? or is it all computer generated
 
Similar is bad when talking about passwords. Use something completely different, one that no one should be able to guess, ever. It should have upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols in it.
 
chocolate632 said:
I originally thought it was a virus, or some kind of malware or something. I was reading some more threads and I just remembered that I entered my password into a site that was originally sent to me, meaning the hackers now know my msn password, so I changed it. Should I change my password for all my other accounts?

My MSN email is formatted like this: word1_word2_word3@hotmail.com
while all my other accounts have this email: word1word2word3@aol.com

Should I bother changing the passwords to all my accounts? I mean, could the hackers see that these two emails are associated and try to use the same password to hack them?
Click to expand...

Hackers don't care about individuals anymore. They rely on social engineering and phishing for that now, its not cost effective for them to go after an individual.

chocolate632 said:
BTW, how could I tell if someone has gone into my email or facebook?
Click to expand...

Unless you have access to the logs (which you don't) there is no way to tell unless they blatantly change something. This facebook crap is not secure, I know that so I don't put anything sensitive on it. AIM is the same way, how many times back in the day were people able to sign onto my account and vice verse? Too many times to remember! (Mac OS 9 and Win 98 days). Nothing has changed, just be careful with your passwords and hopefully you have friends that aren't stupid enough to fall for it when someone else starts talking to them using your screen names. I always tell people if it sounds really odd or its something major they say CALL ME and confirm.
 
econoline06 said:
Hackers don't care about individuals anymore. They rely on social engineering and phishing for that now, its not cost effective for them to go after an individual.



Unless you have access to the logs (which you don't) there is no way to tell unless they blatantly change something. This facebook crap is not secure, I know that so I don't put anything sensitive on it. AIM is the same way, how many times back in the day were people able to sign onto my account and vice verse? Too many times to remember! (Mac OS 9 and Win 98 days). Nothing has changed, just be careful with your passwords and hopefully you have friends that aren't stupid enough to fall for it when someone else starts talking to them using your screen names. I always tell people if it sounds really odd or its something major they say CALL ME and confirm.
Click to expand...

So your saying there is no need to change my password to my other accounts, even if the email addresses are similar?
 
Most services supply as "Last Logged in Time", or "Last Activity" If someone has logged into your account, this will change. Look at it, and if it doesnt match what you know. (IE: You know that you didnt log in last night) then someone has your p/w.

Gmail has a really cool feature where you can check how many locations your are signed into your account from. So if you get to work and realize that you forgot to log out at home, you can log your home computer out from work. Really handy.
 
Cool, i didn't know that about gmail. But what do you guys think, should I change my passwords for all my accounts? Or do you think the hacker is not going to bother going after those accounts
 
chocolate632 said:
Cool, i didn't know that about gmail. But what do you guys think, should I change my passwords for all my accounts? Or do you think the hacker is not going to bother going after those accounts
Click to expand...

I'd change them to be sure.

You never know who it might be.
 
can't delete adium file- virus?

Today Adium had some software updates which I downloaded. Afterwards, I looked around adium and the new things seemed good.

Then my mac (powerbook g4) started acting very slowly. I tried to delete the trash, but I got the message "The operation cannot be completed because the item 'rbssplitview' is in use" at least 20 times with a different filename substituted each time.

When I open the trash I see an image that looks like a piece of paper with a pencil on it. Under it, it says, "Adium".

I thought macs didn't get viruses ... what's going on???
 
My mate has this thing too - and it happens when his PC is off.

His password/MSN account has obviously been taken and is being used to spam everyone. Pretty annoying, because I get offline messaged by him too.
 
maybe you logged in at an (infected) windows machine and accidentally checked auto-login and save password... sound much more likely to me than somebody hacking you account and doing basically nothing with it.
 
My wife has a MacBook Pro running Adium.
I am still on a PC, with MSN.

The other day my wife received an MSN message that was obviously a spam/phishing type link. The user name was something random, but when she hovered over the name it displayed my hotmail address.

I was in the same room on my PC, but not logged into MSN at the time.
Our first assumption was that my PC must have a virus.

I logged into MSN, and as I did that, she received a message from Adium saying that I had been disconnected because I had just logged in to a different location.

Thing is - SHE was already logged into HER MSN account on Adium.

Is it possible for two separate users to be logged into two separate MSN accounts on Adium at the same time?

Regardless - very confused (and concerned) about what happened.. and how.

:confused:
 
I thought MACs did't get Viruses!!

I have a MacBook for about a year or more, and just recently my msn messenger has been acting really weird. I was told it is a virus, basically what happens is that every time i got on msn, it shows about 20 people going online too. Like the little windows popping up from the right bottom of the screen, until it pratically fills the screen with those small windows of people going on, and the little beep plays for a few minutes.
Does anyone know what that is? If yes, is there anyway i can get rid of it?
Thank you so much,
Rachelest
 
rachelest said:
I have a MacBook for about a year or more, and just recently my msn messenger has been acting really weird. I was told it is a virus, basically what happens is that every time i got on msn, it shows about 20 people going online too. Like the little windows popping up from the right bottom of the screen, until it pratically fills the screen with those small windows of people going on, and the little beep plays for a few minutes.
Does anyone know what that is? If yes, is there anyway i can get rid of it?
Thank you so much,
Rachelest
Click to expand...

Re: title of your post...

Macs DO NOT get viruses... that which you described is not a virus... why don't people know the definition of a virus??
 
rachelest said:
I have a MacBook for about a year or more, and just recently my msn messenger has been acting really weird. I was told it is a virus, basically what happens is that every time i got on msn, it shows about 20 people going online too. Like the little windows popping up from the right bottom of the screen, until it pratically fills the screen with those small windows of people going on, and the little beep plays for a few minutes.
Does anyone know what that is? If yes, is there anyway i can get rid of it?
Thank you so much,
Rachelest
Click to expand...

It's happened to me once; it's not a virus, just a bug in MSN I suspect.
 
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