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Malware

Avatar John Nicholas
The other day, I received a threatening email stating that the sender had put malware on my iMac AND my smartphone. My activity over last 172 days had been tracked. It revealed a Password that I use in System Preferences Security and a few other places; but most of my other passwords are alphanumeric/symbol combinations of 10 digits or more, which are stored in a Passworded encrypted vault (not the same revealed password)

How can I check whether genuinely the malware is there (as I believe it must be) and how to neutralise it ?

Sophos Home didn’t alert me and subsequent scans don’t show it.

I don’t use Social media but two friends of my wife’s insist on sending on "funny" jokes or poems they have received in multiple friend mailings, or items they have seen on Facebook. Elsewhere, I have not knowingly clicked on any "link". I don’t purchase things online from dubious sources. Yes, "national" firms sometimes, ebay, Amazon, a local website for selling stuff last November (could that be it).

Late last year I changed my Samsung phone and found that, even with different recommended or even Samsung produced software, photos would not transfer from the phone to the iMac. Even now Samsung hasn’t solved the problem but of course it’s hardly the most pressing thing to chase them yet again about in this Covid-19 time. Each time in the past they pass it around every arm of their organisation and come back saying it will be another couple of days. They tried for 8 hours one day to solve the problem; then they took over control of the devices remotely !!! The only way found by them was using Dropbox which was hellishly slow, I had 400 pics to move. The way I have to do it now is to email pics in batches of 5 from a gmail address on my phone to a domain address on my iMac . (Yes I know; I should stump up for an iPhone and sync things…..but that’s for another day).

Rightly, or probably wrongly if some jerk is using the malware to track my activity, I have changed the passwords where I believe them to have been compromised.

So……HELP what should I do next.

Re: Malware

Avatar Mick Burrell
I suspect this is a complete scam. For about a year, I've received similar emails - up to 20 per day at the peak - telling me they've videoed me watching "adult" sites and will send the video to all my contacts unless I pay. So far, none of my contacts have received a video.

It's probably that a web site you've used that password on in the past has been breached but that's all - you have no Malware. Sophos is well respected but if you're worried, you could try MalWare Bytes too.

Not sure why you mention your phone unless you think Samsung are the culprits - teaching you a lesson for using Apple!

Re: Malware

Avatar John Nicholas
I only mentioned the phone because of the very lengthy remote access / control that Samsung had of both the phone and the iMac whilst trying to resolve (unsuccessfully) the problem of photo transfer. I wondered whether malware could have got in then ?

So I'll ignore for the moment and cross fingers toes and eyeballs. If the "scam" turns out to be serious I will update this post.

Re: Malware

Avatar John Nicholas
Thank you Mick. MalWare Bytes comes up with zero problems, so hopefully you are right re some website or other getting breached rather than the Mac & phone themselves being compromised. I have had these scams in the past but ignored them of course, but the mention of one of my actual many many passwords concerned me this time.
 
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