How to clean malware on mac

[Galdorf]

With windows 8 many people have gone over to mac so has many of my customers in my 35 years a a computer tech i have not needed to clean a mac now there is malware for macs i need to know what programs to use.
So what programs would you suggest to use to clean mac of malware/rootkits ect.

 

[Markverhyden]

Malware, in general, on OS X, just like any *nix, is incredibly rare. In fact the probability of a hardware failure is much higher.

What I have seen so far actually has to be installed just like any other application. Never have seen or heard of any type of drive by infections. I've only ever seen one "infection" and it was basically a browser redirect. From what I have read and heard that seems to be the most common thing. So browser resets usually fixes things.

Due to the popularity of Mac's all major anti-malware vendors have one or more products for use on OS X. Another thing that is great about Mac's is target disk mode. No need to monkey around with cracking cases to pull a HD to mount on another machine (of course the machine does have to power up). Just power up holding down the T key and it becomes an external drive accessible via firewire or thunderbolt. So you can do an offline scan that way.

 

[Galdorf]

Customers are getting constant popups so my guess it is malware ,also webpage hijacks.
Looks just like infections PC's get popups all over telling you your computer is infected call this number stuff, ads where ads should not be there are porn ads taking over normal ads.
Just did a scan with avast for mac found 73 infections mostly vsearch-a,Genieo-k-v.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

For macs, I heard about a few word marco viruses, but lately I've heard of tablets getting like FBI virus. Not seen it. Have you heard of shellshock?

http://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/shellshock-vulnerability-what-mac-os-x-users-need-to-know/

Not sure what tools to use besides AV. Thought macs didn't get viruses

 

[Galdorf]

For macs, I heard about a few word marco viruses, but lately I've heard of tablets getting like FBI virus. Not seen it. Have you heard of shellshock?

http://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/shellshock-vulnerability-what-mac-os-x-users-need-to-know/

Not sure what tools to use besides AV. Thought macs didn't get viruses

Getting lots of reports of malware on macs from customers popups,hijacks are more common ,after running avast popups stopped and no more ads with porn and ad hijackers.

 

[JustInspired]

This is by far the best automatic browser malware/adware removal tool I have found: http://www.adwaremedic.com/index.php

 

[Markverhyden]

Malware encompasses a lot of stuff. I consider things like browser highjacks, redirects, etc (which is what you are describing) to be a different class from things like Crypto, FBI, root kits etc.

Browser related attacks, at this point, are still not drive by from what I have seen. It's a case of PEBKAC. This malware is generally very easy to remove via a full browser reset. Of course that will delete all of the stored info so that is a pain for some. At this point these are few in number and a good understanding of how OS X works will go far to understand how to manually remove them.

The true virus type material is a different animal. I've gotten my hands on two viruses and they were installed like any other program and easily removed. I know there have been several articles taking about some other exploits but they are totally devoid any real facts. Of course EU's can and will download and install bad programs without any research. I have yet to hear of any malware on OS X that is installed via a drive by. At this point the EU's are always making a choice to install something.

I'm sure as black hats turn more of their attention to OS X we will see more, especially of the browser related stuff. But at this point, given that OS X is *nix, finding infections via drive by's is highly unlikely. And if we do it will most likely be a zero day exploit so anti-malware programs will be useless anyways.

 

[freedomit]

Install Sophos for Mac as it's free?

 

[Galdorf]

The malware actually targets safari i installed firefox and surfed around there was no popups or hijacks so i used it to download software to clean it.
Looks like customer got hit by a drive-by download and was tricked into installing it.
Also there was an ircbot as well after looking at logs of the AV looks like macs should have AV installed if your not a careful person.

 

[thomasz07]

The only maleware I have found in the Macs that I service is the Kyle and Stan virus which was easily removed by deleting the files that it installed.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

I'm a big fan of Avast on Windows. Never tried their Mac product. But they have in their Windows AV, a tool called Browser cleanup. You may check into that to see if it exists on Mac, if so you might be able to utilize that also.

 

[altrenda]

Another vote for adware medic.

 

[donaldkepler]

Usually, files downloaded via applications such as Safari, iChat, and Mail are checked for safety at a particular time that they are opened. One thing which I know about OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is; it checks for known malware and alerts a user that do not install any specific software on your system.