Possible crack/hack? Urgently Need Help!

[BenEndeem]

I checked my Activity Monitor and noticed a process called 'mdworker', in the user column it said 'nobody'. I've noticed a slight decrease in performance too. Does this mean I've been hacked? Or is there an innocent explanation? Help will be greatly appreciated, thank you.

 

[robbieduncan]

That is part of the Spotlight system. It is certainly nothing to worry about. The nobody user is normal: it's not a real user so Apple cleverly include a system user called nobody!

 

[GGJstudios]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=mdworker+site:forums.macrumors.com&as_qdr=y&btnG=Search

 

[Eidorian]

What is "insert process name" as your search query is a good solution...

 

[BenEndeem]

Is there a problem though? By the sound of those on the link its related to severe problems requiring reinstallation .

Thanks again.

 

[robbieduncan]

Did you read the links carefully? If it's using huge amounts of CPU all the time then there is an issue, otherwise no: it's part of the core OS. It's meant to be there.

 

[TH-Gunner]

mdworker is part of Spotlight and sometimes goes into phases where it's doing work for like 5 hours...

 

[pjrobertson]

If spotlight is indexing a drive or something then it'll chew up lots of resources. Wait some time and it'll go back to normal.

 

[localoid]

You can disable Spotlight (link is Leopard specific). Probably not a good idea for the typical user, but doing so can work wonders if you're using your Mac as a DAW, or otherwise running an app that you don't want to take a performance hit from mdworker kicking in. You can do the same in Tiger, via a different method... (search is your friend).