Intrusion Suspected, Advice Sought

[Mark Stanislav]

I guess I fail to see where your actual evidence for concern is? Can 
you specifically tell us what you have seen with reason to believe it 
was caused by
some form of an intruder? Permission problems can occur on their own 
with OS X. And never forget about programs doing their own bidding 
after you authenticate.
If there was a violation of your wanted effects, I would believe it was 
a program you installed personally and not an outside intruder.

 From your scenario, I really doubt you have been compromised, and 
unless you have a very important computer, I don't think you would be 
getting attacked
to begin with on an OS like this. I haven't heard of any Mac OS X worms 
or anything like that.

-Mark

On Jan 6, 2005, at 11:29 PM, JohnG wrote:

> I run OS X 10.3.7 on a PowerMac MDD G4 on a cable broadband 
> connection. I have reason to think my system has been tampered with. 
> Security features in Mac OS X have been left unlocked (Preference Pane 
> - Users) even though a master lock has always been set in the Security 
> Preference Pane. This locks all other important preference panes which 
> could be tampered with. Also permissions have been reset at every boot 
> in my working directory. I've worked on this machine for about 17 
> months, and I know its rhythms and what should be what. The 
> permissions problem is persistent and new. I do not think I am being 
> paranoid or alarmist. I have always had a NAT router, commercial 
> firewall, and virus protection.
>
> The only thing I can think of is a hidden *nix program from a 
> downloaded program (shareware/freeware) (I have scanned all packages 
> for viruses). I am almost positive it did not come via e-mail. I say 
> almost because I have been receiving odd e-mails that are totally 
> blank and have no information I can find. Conceivably, it could have 
> been a hacker. If so, that person was very skillful in getting in and 
> only left small traces of poking around.
>
> I assume your advice will be to do a clean re-install of both system 
> and programs. My question is how do I re-import the data from full 
> backup (probably also containing whatever it is) without further 
> jeopardizing my system? Any other advice, tips, or pointers to FreeBSD 
> programs I could run on Mac would be greatly appreciated.
>
> John Scherb
>
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