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Screen Sharing Hacker?

N

nelly22

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 29, 2009
366
5
Today i saw unknown item in Finder Sidebar under Shared. When i clicked it, there was empty list and top of it was "Connecting... Share Screen... Connect As...". So someone tried to connect to my Mac and share screen???

I have Snow Leopard and all Sharing settings are off. Firewall is on and now i turned "Block all incoming connections" to on.

I have bonjour daemon running since it is required in SL, but i did this trick, which disables bonjour advertising:
Disable Bonjour advertising service without disabling Bonjour queries and DNS
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3789?viewlocale=en_US

How i can prevent others from seeing my Mac at all? Above trick is supposed to do this?
Snow Leopard disabling mDNSResponder/Bonjour drops internet
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/779592/

How i can setup AppleScript to alert me when this happens again? I tried to find any related strings in log and plist files, but i did not find anything. What tell tale signs i should find in logs to see if this has happened earlier?

Does this user see my Short Name somehow?

Is there any way i can find out his ip-address and other information?

Thanks
 
nelly22 said:
Today i saw unknown item in Finder Sidebar under Shared. When i clicked it, there was empty list and top of it was "Connecting... Share Screen... Connect As...". So someone tried to connect to my Mac and share screen???
Click to expand...

Uh, no.

That is another computer on your network, and by you clicking on it, it was "connecting..." to see if he had any shared files for you to view.

Nothing to worry about. move along.
 
Thanks.

But this trick in Apples page should disable Bonjour advertising service???

And after that trick, even if there is another Mac user with Bonjour enabled in my network, he should not be able to see me in his sidebar and i see him in my sidebar???
 
It's not just Bonjour that allows that. I see my Windows machines on my network. Only other machines that are on your network will appear there. No one is trying to get you, they likely don't even know you're there and likely didn't set anything up to appear on your list. Just make sure you having your Sharing items disabled in system preferences.
 
Shared section on finder window sidebar

In a finder window is where you will connect to most sources of files.
For instance, there are your hard drive in your computer, which you may have more than one, and the folders in that hard drive. The sidebar shows you links to frequently (commonly ) used locations, your home folder, your applications etc.
The first section is DEVICES, these are YOUR hardware devices
the second section SHARED is the NETWORKED computers you share a network with.
The third section is places, these are the various folders on your computer.

When you look under shared, if there is a computer there, it is something you can TRY to log into, ( you will need the password and username of a valid user on that computer ). If you choose screen share, you are basically going to SEE ( in a window ) what you would see if you were at the computer. If you choose
'connect as' then you are basically connecting that users FILE access to yours, ( think of it as, you are adding their hard drive to your computer )

If you want to help someone do something on their computer,
you would use screen share, and then you could see their screen,
and your mouse is their mouse and you type as if you type on their keyboard. This is great for, running software on THAT computer,
say,,, seeing your desktop from home, or, checking your email at home just as if you were at your desk. This is all controlled in your system preferences under SHARING with REMOTE MANAGEMENT ( remote login is something else it is SSH secure remote networking ). The FILE SHARING is the ability to share files.

Bonjour is NOT what makes you visible, it is like, a NEON sign to SHOW you off. Bonjour is something like,,, make it easy to find, it is NOT,, turn bonjour off and you are hidden, in ANY way,, there are SO many ways to find a computer,,, you cant hide!!!, you CAN turn off all the remote login access
and you CAN make sure your passwords are 8+ characters and NOT words.
but,, ignore bonjour, it is basically, so that,, when a new computer goes on a network that it can find things like the PRINTER, since they have bonjour turned ON ( again think neon advertising sign )

When you CONNECT AS,, to a shared computer, this will just make that hard drive like it was yours, so,,,
if I want to copy 10 GB of files from my computer to another's, I just CONNECT AS,, the user I want to have the files, and then I can drag and drop files from my hard drive to theirs very fast,
this is NOT giving me the view of their desktop or what software they are running, or anything like that, it is just like connecting an external harddrive.

THOSE are the two choices, of how to connect to a shared computer,
SHARED means,, you share the same local network,, all people on your local network can 'see' you and you cant hide from them, that is impossible.

You sound a little worried about security, so just go check in your system preferences, and make sure you have turned off, file sharing, and remote login and remote management. ALL in sharing, ( also note, if you suspect things, make sure there is no schedule to turn on the computer on its own, under energy saver )

I suspect you just saw something that scared you, but, is nothing of danger, and that nothing happened.
:)
 
Similar Experience

About 10 minutes ago, i saw my cursor acting funny. it was moving without my hand on the trackpad. at first i thought it was a bug, but i had to fight it to get some movement. When the cursor started shutting down windows, i used the keyboard shortcut to log off. However, the incident has my quite concerned. is there a way to prevent your computer from showing up on the sidebar as a computer one may connect to?
 
dragonlord452 said:
About 10 minutes ago, i saw my cursor acting funny. it was moving without my hand on the trackpad. at first i thought it was a bug, but i had to fight it to get some movement. When the cursor started shutting down windows, i used the keyboard shortcut to log off. However, the incident has my quite concerned. is there a way to prevent your computer from showing up on the sidebar as a computer one may connect to?
Click to expand...
Launch System Preferences.
Choose the Sharing panel.
Uncheck "Screen Sharing" in list.

If you intend to enable Screen Sharing, you should disable the "All user" radio button in "Allow access for" by clicking the "Only these users" radio button, and set strong passwords for any accounts or groups you allow access for in the list. Remove any users from the list if you don't want them to share the screen at all.

You should also click the Computer Settings... button and uncheck both "Anyone may request permission..." and "VNC views may control screen...".

If you were on your own personal network, you should also attempt to find out who is using your network without permission. If you were on a public wireless network, you should share less freely when doing so.
 
Cursor moving on its own! IS a hacker accessing my data?

chown33 said:
Launch System Preferences.
Choose the Sharing panel.
Uncheck "Screen Sharing" in list.

If you intend to enable Screen Sharing, you should disable the "All user" radio button in "Allow access for" by clicking the "Only these users" radio button, and set strong passwords for any accounts or groups you allow access for in the list. Remove any users from the list if you don't want them to share the screen at all.

You should also click the Computer Settings... button and uncheck both "Anyone may request permission..." and "VNC views may control screen...".

If you were on your own personal network, you should also attempt to find out who is using your network without permission. If you were on a public wireless network, you should share less freely when doing so.
Click to expand...

----------------
Hi - I have observed the same thing, not once but a few times up until now. Initially I thought its just because I always have many firefox windows open and thought perhaps that the macbook pro (running snow leopard) is really bogged down in terms of processing(which makes no sense) really is but since its happened multiple times, its freaking me out. Suddenly out of nowhere the cursor gets a life of its own and starts open folders, tabs, closing tabs and I can't do much but watch because it wont let me take control of the screen.

When this happens, I just shut down the computer and restart. But today when I did that, the weird behavior continued. So now, I've just turned it off, and also turned off the wifi so no one outside (if they are indeed hacking my account) can access it.

It possible that
a) my ex-boyfriend who helped me set up my mac could have installed something on it which gives him access to my laptop
b) visits to free porn sites in the past have embedded some sort of virus on it (completely my fault and I hang my head in shame)
c) someone has hacked in and managed to crack the password to my wifi network etc.

So what should I do to prevent this ghost from controlling my laptop and accessing all my data (he probably already has)? Please please help.

Also, how do people store passwords on their laptops? Other than password protected files. Any suggestions?
 
indiemacgirl said:
It possible that
a) my ex-boyfriend who helped me set up my mac could have installed something on it which gives him access to my laptop
b) visits to free porn sites in the past have embedded some sort of virus on it (completely my fault and I hang my head in shame)
c) someone has hacked in and managed to crack the password to my wifi network etc.

So what should I do to prevent this ghost from controlling my laptop and accessing all my data (he probably already has)? Please please help.

Also, how do people store passwords on their laptops? Other than password protected files. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

a) Certainly possible
b) Not likely, but possible
c) Just hacking your wireless would not be enough to gain access to you Mac

You didn't mention if you have tried the ideas presented in this thread, such as ensuring screen sharing is disabled.

As for password protection, a popular free option is KeePassX. It's cross-platform, which is why I like it so much. For a Mac specific and not free option 1Password is often highly recommended.
 
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