[If You Are Hurried, a synopsis is found near the end of this post.]
In 2003, I got a very intense virus on a PC. It took me 2 weeks to get it off. The techies helping me found that it was "network aware" and we found it would move and change folders it was hiding in. Incidently, in that same time period, not hardly given status as it should have been, but burried deep in the back of papers, if reported at all was the FBI's new "Operation Magic Lantern" wherein the FBI and the Federal Criminals trampling the US Constitution and Bill of Rights with their newly passed Patriot Act took upon themselves power to "inject" anyones computer with a virus or trojan and conduct keylogging software. It was then a few more years that we then found out about the vicious and illegal abuses of the Bush Administration. The Patriot Act and the survailance state are not for Al Quida (al-CIA-duh) but for the American people (sheeple).
Well, to not go further in what some will be perhaps castigate me for being political, suffice it to say that once my virus was dected and found, we had to "kill" it and it's process before it could be deleted. I was then sent to the techies who submitted it to Symantic Corporation for analysis. They reported back that they couldn't have caught that one, and didn't (for Norton was running on my PC). They said it was highly sophisticated. Then I was told where on my system I could find a folder, to look inside for a text file. Indeed, there it was, a text file with keylogging entry for two solid weeks of every keystroke I'd made. I could see Usernames, passwords. I had two cars on Ebay at the time being sold. I could see where it recorded even photoshop files being opened and closed. It was all recorded. Norton Anti-virus didn't catch it.
Two years later, I bought a Mac, PowerPC. How great that mac has been. No known viruses.
Now, this week I got my new Mac Pro. I copied my last system hard drive to the new Mac Pro. I had a few applications pop up a note asking to look for "Times New Roman" and "arial" fonts on my second hard drive on the system. Strange. Why weren't they finding the basic fonts on the boot drive.
I was on with Apple Tech support today to find out why my front headphone jack on my new computer wouldn't work. We reset the power settings and corrected that problem, now sufficient power gets to the headphone jack.
Then, I told them about my next little issue, for it was nothing major.
Font Folder With Virus Invected Fonts?
I had told tech support that in the last few days I'd had a few applications open up and ask for these alternate fonts (Arial, Times New Roman) on the second hard drive. I gave permission, but thought that was messed up and I knew I'd have to look into the problem later.
So, today, with Apple Tech support, they had me go to my main user directory, and in the Library go to "fonts" and rename it to "Fonts1" It would not let me change the name. I then opened up the "more Info" tab and tried there. It was greyed out and I could not rename it. I unlocked it, I had to put in my administrator password, and yet the Fonts folder did not let me rename it. Then, tech support had me just make a new folder on the desktop. I put the all the fonts from the font folder (We were in safe mode, having booted up with me holding down the shift key, by the way), into the folder on the desktop. There were 28 fonts. All standard, I think. Then, the font folder was empty.
We rebooted. Upon rebooting, I started up Firefox and a few other applications and sure enough, no problems. The app opened without asking to go to the 2nd drive for the basic fonts.
After I was off the phone with Apple Tech support, then came the problems in a big way. I went back to the folder in the Library, and found it was "empty" which seemed strange. I assumed it had reloaded some basic system fonts. With an empty font folder, I thought I'd browse the fonts on my system with Font Book. I opened up Font Book. Wow, tons of fonts. Then it hit me and I remembered. Weeks ago I had been looking at fonts, and found I had tons of hebrew fonts, Arabic fonts, many asian languate fonts, none of which I had ever installed. I had gone through, and I thought, deleted them. I had been thinking of asking a brother if he had installed or enabled them as a joke on me, but I forgot about the issue and never asked.
So, tonight I began to delete these fonts. Then, I began from fontbook look them up by "reveal in finder" to see where they were stored. Sure enough they were in my main system directory in the font folder in the library. After deleting many from there, I found they would somehow regenerate and reappear. I then deleted the whole font folder, which asked for my administrator password to perform. I deleted it to teh trash adn emptied the trash. Back in Font Book, the fonts were still there, but how could they be?
I found the whole folder again someone regenerated with all the fonts previously deleted within either Font Book or the Finder.
So, then, I started browsing for virus issues with fonts and OSX. Obviously, hardly anything existant on that topic.
I then found a free virus scan for Mac OS X. Skeptical I read a while and searched other sites and comments of posters to see if I thought it was legit. I downloaded it, and by the time I installed it, the whole OS was in corruption mode, all my "menus" were disappearing. I could see buttons, but no text. Text everywhere was disappearing. It was awful to see this happening on a mac. I installed the anti-Virus software anyway, just clicking on the right button through setup. It ran a scan, but I couldn't see the results of the scan. I rebooted. Same problem, but this time worse than ever. All the system text and menus were blank.
I rebooted in safe mode, where I can once again read menus, and I opened up that anti-virus software again which is currently scanning my system.
I thought I'd make an appeal to any technically minded people here on what their thoughts might be.
Specs:
The hard drive from my old mac was running OS 10.4.11 on it. I migrated that whole drive to my new Mac Pro running the latest and best.
I do have a folder on my second drive that has some fonts in it. As I've typed this, I realize that folder might be the very source of some virus, as the system had asked for fonts from that second drive.
The anti-virus software currently doing a scan is called:
ClamXav
Update:
That virus scan revealed nothing of note, e-mail stuff of no consequence: "phishers."
Booting back up in Safe mode I went to the same system font folder and looked through it. I also looked at the font folder on the desktop, and it now has three times the fonts it did before. I went through them and opened them all up, to see if a re-install of them through the Font Book would flag any problems. It installed them, but yet "installed" they fail to show up in Font book anywhere. All of the fonts in Font Book are gone, even after I install fonts.
To reboot the computer, the thing is just messed up. It freezes up. I can't even Command+Tab through windows, there is no response. I can't see the dock. I reboot and get the same thing.
The computer went from wonderfully operating to total joke in a matter of hours. I'll appreciate a call from Apple in the Morning (it's scheduled) but I don't much anticipate a whole lot of help unless they really have a sharp person on there who knows their stuff. Maybe a full re-install will be what happens, but that will suck.
In 2003, I got a very intense virus on a PC. It took me 2 weeks to get it off. The techies helping me found that it was "network aware" and we found it would move and change folders it was hiding in. Incidently, in that same time period, not hardly given status as it should have been, but burried deep in the back of papers, if reported at all was the FBI's new "Operation Magic Lantern" wherein the FBI and the Federal Criminals trampling the US Constitution and Bill of Rights with their newly passed Patriot Act took upon themselves power to "inject" anyones computer with a virus or trojan and conduct keylogging software. It was then a few more years that we then found out about the vicious and illegal abuses of the Bush Administration. The Patriot Act and the survailance state are not for Al Quida (al-CIA-duh) but for the American people (sheeple).
Well, to not go further in what some will be perhaps castigate me for being political, suffice it to say that once my virus was dected and found, we had to "kill" it and it's process before it could be deleted. I was then sent to the techies who submitted it to Symantic Corporation for analysis. They reported back that they couldn't have caught that one, and didn't (for Norton was running on my PC). They said it was highly sophisticated. Then I was told where on my system I could find a folder, to look inside for a text file. Indeed, there it was, a text file with keylogging entry for two solid weeks of every keystroke I'd made. I could see Usernames, passwords. I had two cars on Ebay at the time being sold. I could see where it recorded even photoshop files being opened and closed. It was all recorded. Norton Anti-virus didn't catch it.
Two years later, I bought a Mac, PowerPC. How great that mac has been. No known viruses.
Now, this week I got my new Mac Pro. I copied my last system hard drive to the new Mac Pro. I had a few applications pop up a note asking to look for "Times New Roman" and "arial" fonts on my second hard drive on the system. Strange. Why weren't they finding the basic fonts on the boot drive.
I was on with Apple Tech support today to find out why my front headphone jack on my new computer wouldn't work. We reset the power settings and corrected that problem, now sufficient power gets to the headphone jack.
Then, I told them about my next little issue, for it was nothing major.
Font Folder With Virus Invected Fonts?
I had told tech support that in the last few days I'd had a few applications open up and ask for these alternate fonts (Arial, Times New Roman) on the second hard drive. I gave permission, but thought that was messed up and I knew I'd have to look into the problem later.
So, today, with Apple Tech support, they had me go to my main user directory, and in the Library go to "fonts" and rename it to "Fonts1" It would not let me change the name. I then opened up the "more Info" tab and tried there. It was greyed out and I could not rename it. I unlocked it, I had to put in my administrator password, and yet the Fonts folder did not let me rename it. Then, tech support had me just make a new folder on the desktop. I put the all the fonts from the font folder (We were in safe mode, having booted up with me holding down the shift key, by the way), into the folder on the desktop. There were 28 fonts. All standard, I think. Then, the font folder was empty.
We rebooted. Upon rebooting, I started up Firefox and a few other applications and sure enough, no problems. The app opened without asking to go to the 2nd drive for the basic fonts.
After I was off the phone with Apple Tech support, then came the problems in a big way. I went back to the folder in the Library, and found it was "empty" which seemed strange. I assumed it had reloaded some basic system fonts. With an empty font folder, I thought I'd browse the fonts on my system with Font Book. I opened up Font Book. Wow, tons of fonts. Then it hit me and I remembered. Weeks ago I had been looking at fonts, and found I had tons of hebrew fonts, Arabic fonts, many asian languate fonts, none of which I had ever installed. I had gone through, and I thought, deleted them. I had been thinking of asking a brother if he had installed or enabled them as a joke on me, but I forgot about the issue and never asked.
So, tonight I began to delete these fonts. Then, I began from fontbook look them up by "reveal in finder" to see where they were stored. Sure enough they were in my main system directory in the font folder in the library. After deleting many from there, I found they would somehow regenerate and reappear. I then deleted the whole font folder, which asked for my administrator password to perform. I deleted it to teh trash adn emptied the trash. Back in Font Book, the fonts were still there, but how could they be?
I found the whole folder again someone regenerated with all the fonts previously deleted within either Font Book or the Finder.
So, then, I started browsing for virus issues with fonts and OSX. Obviously, hardly anything existant on that topic.
I then found a free virus scan for Mac OS X. Skeptical I read a while and searched other sites and comments of posters to see if I thought it was legit. I downloaded it, and by the time I installed it, the whole OS was in corruption mode, all my "menus" were disappearing. I could see buttons, but no text. Text everywhere was disappearing. It was awful to see this happening on a mac. I installed the anti-Virus software anyway, just clicking on the right button through setup. It ran a scan, but I couldn't see the results of the scan. I rebooted. Same problem, but this time worse than ever. All the system text and menus were blank.
I rebooted in safe mode, where I can once again read menus, and I opened up that anti-virus software again which is currently scanning my system.
I thought I'd make an appeal to any technically minded people here on what their thoughts might be.
Specs:
The hard drive from my old mac was running OS 10.4.11 on it. I migrated that whole drive to my new Mac Pro running the latest and best.
I do have a folder on my second drive that has some fonts in it. As I've typed this, I realize that folder might be the very source of some virus, as the system had asked for fonts from that second drive.
The anti-virus software currently doing a scan is called:
ClamXav
Update:
That virus scan revealed nothing of note, e-mail stuff of no consequence: "phishers."
Booting back up in Safe mode I went to the same system font folder and looked through it. I also looked at the font folder on the desktop, and it now has three times the fonts it did before. I went through them and opened them all up, to see if a re-install of them through the Font Book would flag any problems. It installed them, but yet "installed" they fail to show up in Font book anywhere. All of the fonts in Font Book are gone, even after I install fonts.
To reboot the computer, the thing is just messed up. It freezes up. I can't even Command+Tab through windows, there is no response. I can't see the dock. I reboot and get the same thing.
The computer went from wonderfully operating to total joke in a matter of hours. I'll appreciate a call from Apple in the Morning (it's scheduled) but I don't much anticipate a whole lot of help unless they really have a sharp person on there who knows their stuff. Maybe a full re-install will be what happens, but that will suck.
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