[G4] Virus and Spy Ware detectors

[Harry Freeman]

On Jun 21, 2005, at 1:16 PM, rich northouse wrote:

> Ron,
>
> Thanks for the response.  Maybe I should have stated the problem, 
> rather  my guess at the solution.
>
> I have a friend who has an e-Mac (75gig, 256Megbyte, OSX3.2 - just 
> updated to Tiger).  She can't get on the net from her machine with a 
> phone modem. It had been working and than all of sudden she couldn't 
> on the net.  Her computer seems to connect with her provider ( it 
> states "connecting" and after a few minutes it says " connected"). 
> However once connected, neither Outlook or Safari work.  Outlook just 
> grinds away doing nothing and Safari within a few seconds comes back 
> with a message that indicates it can't establish a connection -- even 
> though there is a connection to the provider. It appears like it is 
> waiting for a password, but never asks for anything!  I thought it 
> sounded like a virus.  One tech thought that there could be some Spy 
> Ware running, redirecting the efforts of the CPU???
>
> So there is the problem!  Now perhaps you guys might have a solution?
>
> rich
>
>
> On Jun 21, 2005, at 2:42 PM, Ron Steinke wrote:
>
>> On 21 Jun, 2005, at 11:21, rich northouse wrote:
>>
>> Calling on the group's wisdom again -- What is the best Virus and Spy 
>> Ware detector for a Mac?  Any good free stuff?
>>
>> I'm not so sure that you really need an anti-virus program. Are you 
>> using OS-9 or earlier? So far, I haven't heard about any virus that 
>> can affect OS-X even though Virex keeps putting out updates to their 
>> program.
>>
>> I know that someone will say that you should have an anti-virus 
>> program to prevent forwarding a PC virus that you may have gotten 
>> from a document that you received from another PC user, but that 
>> doesn't appear to me to be such a problem. If they insist on using a 
>> machine that is vulnerable to so much mal-ware, aren't they simply 
>> asking for trouble? According to statements I have read, there are 
>> over 97,000 examples of viruses (virii?), trojan horses, macros, etc, 
>> that affect PCs and about 68 that affect Macs. With that condition, 
>> why worry about you giving something to a PC user when he is more 
>> likely to get it all on his own simply by using his machine on the 
>> internet?
>>
>> An experiment was done at a university in California with 8 brand new 
>> PCs right out of the boxes. They were plugged in, turned on, and 
>> configured for internet access. They had software installed that 
>> would sound an alert when any attempt was made to access them from 
>> the outside world. Operators sat down and started surfing the net, 
>> going to different sites so there wouldn't be any duplication of 
>> visits. Within 48 minutes, all 8 had sounded the alert.
>>
>> None of the machines were Macs, so the result from the experiment 
>> probably cannot be used with any degree of certainty. But---it does 
>> point out that PCs are not safe at all, even when they are brand new.

Perhaps you might want to open up "Activity Monitor: and see which 
process are using the most CPU time and percentage. There might be some 
clue as to what is happening
 
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 H a r r y   ( * ^ _ ^ * )