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ClamXav?
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57 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
ClamXav has been around for a long time, is free and is frequently updated.
While some people love to point out that you don't really need anti-virus to protect your Macs, it's good practice to run it anyways to prevent accidentally spreading anything to Windows machines on your company's network.
I have little first-hand experience working with Macs but this is the first thing that popped into my head. It's the Mac version of ClamAV. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of most AV software, but I've had very good experiences using it on Windows and Linux.
Incidentally, trying to Google for good Mac antivirus brings up a ton of MacRumor forum posts where people still claim the Macs are immune to malware. Never listen to those tools.
I don't. I don't think many Mac users do. There still aren't any OS X viruses in the wild. There have been a few trojans. I wouldn't waste the processor cycles on an active scanner. If you wanna scan your Mac, just grab ClamXav and go from there. No need to spend money on one. Also, I've done this and all it found on my machine were Windows viruses in mail attachments.
When I use NoScript (along with Adblock, though on Firefox), you have to be sure to only allow the stream site for the stream you are using.
Typically, the streams for the "Link 1" stream is 04stream.com, only allow that, and you should be fine.
As far as removing the malware, I'm not sure, since I haven't ever gotten it.
Off the top of my head, you can TRY ClamXAV for Mac to see if that works to find anything you've accidentally infected your machine with, though I'm not that high on Clam's detection rates:
http://www.clamxav.com/download.php
See if that works, I guess. Sophos is another option others have mentioned.
Honestly, it's not necessary unless you specifically run into an issue with malware, as it is quite rare on OS X. The best preventative measure is simply to avoid oddball software and browser extensions, particularly sourced from online advertisements (or advertisements posing as necessary system add-ons, etcetera).
If you do run into trouble, the go-to malware solutions for OS X are ClamXav, Sophos, and Avast!.
You can use ClamXav for free or Sophos or Avast! (free, but paid on other platforms). You can also upload the file(s) to https://www.virustotal.com/ to see if they are in fact infected.
That being said, I think its more likely cache files from something like Firefox or some other program. Have you changed the locations of any cache directories for some of your programs?
Many college require an antivirus of some sort before you use their networks. OS X has a very sophisticated set of tools built right in to monitor your computer and protect you from threats of this nature, but some colleges are don't accept that as enough.
The reason for this is that OS X only protects against threats to OS X systems. It could care less if you're passing along a file with a Windows virus in it.
Most Anti-Virus programs are a real pain in the ass, which is one of the big draws to the Mac in the first place. But if you really must have one, ClamXav is the one I recommend. It's light-weight, unobtrusive, and can be deleted with a single drag to the Trash.
What app is your school offering for free, just out of idle curiosity?
ClamXav would probably be fine for what you need, one time scan of entire hard drive. It's a commercial product that uses the open source ClamAV engine. See: http://www.clamav.net/download.html#otherversions http://www.clamxav.com You can also buy via the Mac App Store, though you will have to check for updates to get the latest version that way.
Also, create a Guest account on your computer and have your niece use that account when she borrows it. Without access to an admin account, nefarious apps should have a much harder time doing damage.
You said "virus/malware that might happen to make it past VPN/Tor" - those are network-level privacy protections and offer absolutely ZERO protection from malicious software you may be forced or tricked into downloading.
Unless there's a specific reason to do so, I (still - for now at least) think Mac malware scanning without some suspicion of compromise is not worthwhile. But if you think differently a good and cheap AV setup for the Mac is ClamXav ... which I'm pretty sure can still do scheduled scans.
If you're worried about "hardware identifiers" or "forensic fingerprints" - run Tor without JavaScript, and never run anything you download from there. Creative use of virtual machines can help, but ultimately that doesn't help if / when anti-VM code escapes the virtualization. If you're after a decent start down that path, whonix is something to look at.
To my knowledge there is no "master log" of browsing or other activity in OS X - though a lot of things show up in syslog. If you are compromised, the malicious software may implement its own logging (keystroke, network, whatever) and there's nothing you can do about that without detecting it first.
Seems nuts. ClamXAV is a reputable and free virus scanner for Mac, but also every Mac in the world attempts to download a list of known malware from Apple every day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Quarantine
Most Mac Users only encounter this when they're running Safari and told that their version of the Flash or Java plugins are outdated and won't be run.
So no, definitely don't buy McAfee for Mac.
ClamXAV is another one for Mac that will pick up Windows and Mac malware alike. It will also flag phishing emails.
I find that in the time it runs, however, I can run Adware Medic and manually go through the usual infection spots and check the browsers for redirects/hijacks - So I mostly use it to clean out phishing emails.
If you don't have much Chrome customization (or if they are synced to your Google account) you could try reinstalling Chrome in case there is an extension installed.
Are you running antivirus? You could do a scan with ClamXav or any of the other free options.
http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-mac
http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition.aspx
Sounds like malware/spyware. give me a list of your extensions. Try ClamXav, update it and run it.
Don't buy into "Macs don't get viruses" mantra. If it can execute code, it can be compromised. Macs are just less likely to get them.
ClamX AV is a good antivirus, not sure about "spyware" as in my professional career as an Apple technician I've never seen not even one classically defined infection of it on any of the machines I've ever serviced.
Beyond that though, I've also only encountered two confirmed Mac viruses over the eleven years I've been at this, on the machines I've touched. One was nasty, and the other was a joke.
Also, for the record, I'm not a fanboy, as some of the doubters here have touted. I have a Dell cert, a Toshiba cert, and expired HP/Compaq certs from long, long, ago in a galaxy far far away. I worked for a reputable shop, that did repairs of all kinds. I rarely recommend antivirus software for the Mac, but if you must use it, use ClamX AV.
Okay. Then I'd try Assassin's Creed, Deus Ex: HR, Penumbra: Black Plague, or Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
Though Splinter Cell: Conviction is available, I hear it's more of a run & gun than stealth.
Not that you heard it from me, but you may also try browsing torrents for Wine or Cider wrapped Windows games, or just run Windows via Boot Camp.
If - and that is a big 'If' - if that is the case, then I cannot more highly recommend S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl enough (also available as part of OnLive's $9.99/month PlayPack for those with internet, but with low-end computers or Macs).
Presuming that you own a legitimate copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for PC, emulating it on Mac is perfectly legal. Acquiring a stable wrapper (emulation environment) may be a challenge, but the wrapper software is not illegal (at least not in the States).
e: Ditto for Skyrim.
10.5.8 should be able to handle that. Before running such software, I'd suggest running a free virus scanner such as ClamXav; sometimes those wrappers can be... buggy.
TL;DR The Mac has a small selection, but Amnesia: tDD is total stealth.
P.S. I get a sense that nethack isn't your style of game, but if have the patience to learn it can be very rewarding.
You have to install antivirus on your mac now to appease it. Tried to avoid it for as long as I could but it eventually locked me out of the network. I installed ClamXav and enabled ClamXav Sentry in Prefs (just have it monitoring my downloads folder) and it's stopped giving me crap.
clamXav is free and adequate. Best antivirus is to not be an idiot, keep your software up to date, and if you're really worried make your daily user account standard instead of admin. I don't let flash auto-update, but rather download from adobe each time the thing says I have a new one available.
AFAIK, relevant current threats surround MS Office and Flash.
edit: link in first line didn't show up properly.
Try a few of the suggestions on this page. Also try installing an antivirus program and run a scan, iAntiVirus, or ClamXav. Macs are not impervious to malware or viruses.
It sounds like the homepage is set to consumernews, can you access preferences and click this button?
I really don't know any good AVs for mac but you could try with http://www.clamxav.com/
Also, does this happen with any other browsers or is it just firefox?
You could try this free anti-virus app instead of Sophos.
In my experience ClamXav has a lower impact on usability of your Mac than Sophos.
Just remember to set the scan locations in ClamXav to either your entire user account folder or just your downloads, mail and desktop folders.
You should also set ClamXav to update the antivirus definitions daily.
As for the relative merits of having or not having antivirus software on a Mac, well...
Thousands of people die from slips and falls in bathrooms every year.
Is the appropriate response for this to require helmets for anyone using a bathroom?
Just because something is possible does not mean it is likely.
What /u/damo13579 said.
But to answer your question, there are two great free utilities you can use to check for malware and viruses on a Mac.
Malwarebytes and ClamXAV.
Good luck. Let us know if anything turns up.
Run ClamXAV and AdwareMedic. Manually scan through applications and remove MacKeeper and other newly installed or suspicious software.
Afterwards, check all installed browsers for homepage and search changes and suspicious extensions.
Ah, now we're getting to the root of the problem.
If you have hard drive space and sufficient ram, those crashes and slow load times are actually very likely signs of a virus or viruses.
Norton is at best useless, and, depending who you talk to, actually serves to exacerbate problems with slowness and crashing.
I was wrong about Malwarebytes working on mac- I could've sworn it was Mac compatible, but apparently not. This, though, seems to be a good Mac alternative: http://www.clamxav.com/
Based on the crashing, I would agree that something is wrong. The font is unusual, definitely not something I've ever heard of as a symptom of a virus, but the slowness and crashing definitely are. If that virus scan doesn't turn up anything, I'm not sure what else to tell you. I guess, given that its an Apple, you can take it to an Apple store and have the Genius Bar take a look at it. They are usually pretty helpful.
Yeah, I figured out the ~/Library thing and activity monitor, but It wasn't really helpful. So I fell back to my noobish linux skills - htop in terminal wasn't installed, theres no apt-get on mac - I can't figure out standard top.
I didnt know what process was the malware - On windows I can usually spot that stuff right away under processes or services, but everything in activity monitor and top looked confusing so I just installed CLAMXAV and ran a scan and called it a day. I dont think it removed it.
I did uninstall all sketchy/malicious apps from the Applications folder and removed all weird extensions from safari and chrome. It was still doing weird redirects/ad injection.
Oh well you know, Macs don't get viruses ;)
For viruses you could try clamxav.
For rootkits try
ESET Rootkit Detector
For permanent antivirus protection go with Avira.
I would say that no rootkit software is going to be 100% and there's going to be some debate about if it's even possible for a system to be 100% clear of nefarious code (maybe a HASH verified clean-OS install on a non-networked system).
However basic basic scans with well reviewed antivirus software go a long way and if your IT dept has put effort into making your network secure you should be in good shape, especially considering what kinds of malware is living on the laptops the students are using on your network.
Good luck and remember to have a bus chartered for the nearest volcano if all else fails.
It's not a virus, your browser is just being hijacked to redirect to that site. What you can do is download this http://www.clamxav.com/ and run a scan. It's an AV utility for OS X. You can also go in after resetting safari and look at the extensions/plugins that are installed and remove any that shouldn't be there. That should be all you need to do.
Someone might also suggest a more malware directed scanner that they can recommend you run as well. I don't have any off the top of my head but start with that.
If are used to it from your PC years and you would feel better with one, get ClamXav and let it run. Watch it not find anything for years and years. (Welcome to the bright side.)
ClamX AV is pretty good, but like everyone has said, macs generally dont require it. Any live/active AV is going to use resources and slow the machine down anyway.
In my 4 years at a college helpdesk, the only mac viruses we saw were macros viruses embedded in word documents. We used Symantec from our work Mac, scanning an infected machine in target mode.
The risk to your machine is pretty low. It's more a case of what you may be passing onto Windows users you may be interacting with.
To that end, ClamXAV, ESET or Sophos are all free and may be worth a look.
It's also worth noting that email is a very common attack vector, so if that's covered already and that's the only way you exchange data with others, your exposed attack surface may already be small enough not to worry about it.
In over a decade of using Macs I've never had antivirus and it's never once been a problem, but if for whatever reason you do want to have it I would recommend ClamXav—it's open-source antivirus software designed to run on a Mac, and it doesn't cost any money.
Also, I don't think Firefox is too buggy. I'm using it to type this response, and I've been using it pretty much exclusively on various Macs since 2003 (before it was even called Firefox) and it's pretty rarely caused me problems. It might become buggy if you install lots of extensions and muck around with it, but that's a totally different story. Of course, if you don't want to install lots of extensions and muck around with it, Chrome might be better for you as it's faster, but that's also a different story.
Oh! Also, relevant: for whatever reason I don't understand (it's annoying I think) Apple doesn't seem to let third party apps have direct access to some graphics acceleration features e.g. for rendering video—only their own codecs are allowed access. This means that videos in Adobe flash player (e.g. YouTube) might be a little more choppy when running Mac OS X than when running Windows because they're not getting the same support from the computer's hardware. One way you can solve this (I think) (if it's even a problem for you)—at least on YouTube—is by enabling HTML5 support on YouTube by visiting YouTube's HTML5 page and clicking "Join the HTML5 Trial".
ClamX AV has mostly windows virus definitions mainly because that is what the bulk of of viruses are. ClamX AV is usually up to date on any Mac malware or virus like infections.
Just in case you have a different version installed here's the current link.
After it is installed be sure to update the definitions and schedule regular updates.
We supported a company for awhile that was in this situation and asked for antivirus software on their Macs just for this reason. I ended up using ClamXav and thought it did a pretty decent job.
The geniuses are either lying or ignorant.
I run Kaspersky Anti-Virus on my mac (it's free!), but ClamXav looks good too.
As always, the best anti-virus protection is a bit of common sense. Not being silly enough to download and run suspicious looking things ought to be enough to protect you from much of the bad stuff out there.
Okay, cool. Yeah, I don't know so much about finding out exactly what that was that happened, but it seems like it was a one-time thing. If you want to check it out a little more, or if weird things are happening, try ClamXAV. It's a free virus scanner for Mac that's known to give good results. That's certainly weird though, I've never heard of this happening except for here.
ACMT technician here. It's probably unnecessary, but if it makes you feel better, the piece of AV/anti-malware software that I usually recommend is ClamXAV. Its based on the open source Clam AV engine (which is the default AV software in OS X server.) It's free and open source, and the overhead on your system is unnoticeable.
Edited for formatting error
You'll need to be able to access that partition outside of Bootcamp first. If it's a FAT32-formatted partition, you can probably already do that. If it was formatted NTFS, you'll have to jump through a few hoops first. Macs natively support NTFS, but only in read-only mode, which won't help you when it comes time to remove the malware. You'll need to get NTFS-3G and possibly MacFuse installed in order to get at an NTFS partition into read-write mode.
I'm less clear about what tools you can run on a Mac that will find windows malware, though. You may be able to get some results with ClamXav.
You might also be able to make some progress going at it by hand. Scan the partition looking for the most recent files. Anything that is not a standard Windows file, and that is as recent as the day before the infection showed up is suspect, particularly any .tmp, .dll, .exe, and .com files. In many cases, just finding and deleting the primary malware file should be enough so that you can boot it up again and get MBAM, SAS, etc. to run and get the cleanup finished. Other times, there are hooks in the Windows registry, and deleting the malware file might blue-screen the Windows OS. I recommend moving any suspect files to a neutral location (create a new directory in the Windows partition called \holdhere), and taking copious notes about what steps you've taken, so you can untake them if necessary.
Good Luck!
Antiviruses? On a Mac? Well, they probably can't hurt it much. :) But do those two do Maccy versions? Okay, Avast does. And so does Avira.
http://www.clamxav.com/ is supposed to be a good OSX AV.
But has anyone had a virus on a Mac?
Did it download anything to your PC? I'm guessing you friends have informed you that they are getting suspicious messages from you. Are you sure they are coming for your address and not just spoofing your name?
Viruses are somewhat rare with OSX however, its possible. You can try something like ClamXav to run a scan. What's more likely is that they got your contacts and are sending malware to them from another address that looks like yours.
While you are at it, install the free open source virus scanner from http://www.clamxav.com and run it on her system. Chances are pretty good this in not the first time she injudiciously installed something from a random google result. Malware makers are getting smarter and often will not allow the malware to install itself on a system that might detect it so having a scanner installed reduces your exposure.
>html.exploit.CVE
Internet Explorer exploit:
http://www.clamxav.com/BB/viewtopic.php?t=3202&p=17795
>I would like to know if there's a way to know if he's spying on my aunt's family. He's very tech savy, it's his job, he owns a computer repair shop.
Yes, this is possible if the network traffic is going through his equipment.
Could you upload the file to https://www.virustotal.com/ and link us to the results?
Thanks!
Additionally:
http://www.clamxav.com/BB/viewtopic.php?p=21208&sid=36ed832aa06d6c95fc9336b0b9e981ee
Might want to look at that,basically as long as your IE version is updated(If IE even exists for a MAC...idk) they you are probably fine.
Seconding this. AV software isn't really necessary for general use on Mac OS as long as you're using common sense, but if you're doing some work where security is of particular concern or you'd consider your files a target, ClamXAV is probably your best bet. And it's free!
Sophos is pretty thorough too, but in my experience it absolutely cripples performance as a side effect of all of it's scanning.
- http://www.spigot.com/about/contact-us/uninstall-spigot-mac-extensions/
- Remove ~/Library/Application Support/Spigot/
If you want to be sure, perform a scan with CalmXav. And definitely follow /u/OSPFv3's advice to replace Vuze with Transmission, it's so much better.
ClamXav. It's good, but black-hat hackers don't usually target macs. So don't be surprised if it doesn't find anything. My guess is with all the DDOS attacks on Blizzard recently, I wouldn't be surprised if people were able to get into other accounts.
Well there's some malware at work. Reboot the Mac while holding down the Shift key (just like on Windows or oldentimes Mac).
http://www.clamxav.com is free and reputable antivirus software.
I mean you could open up Activity Monitor and look at what's going on but you wouldn't know. So do as I say.
Is it the free version? If you paid for it you should contact SOPHOS support.
Personally I would install ClamAV and call it a day if all you need to do is access your school's network.
For peace of mind, try the (free) ClamX AV . Run it every couple of months to confirm no viruses.
Also, for the brave, explore the Unix underpinnings of OS X. You can get extremely fine control over the firewall / packet filter (used to be called ipfw; now seems to be pfctl) as well as many other things.
Download and run Sophos for Mac (http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition.aspx) or ClamxAV (http://www.clamxav.com) and it might clear up any Potentially Unwanted Application. Both are free and decent scanners.
I'd argue that you don't NEED antivirus for your personal protection, but it wouldn't hurt to have one installed to prevent spreading potential malware to Windows users you share files with.
Even if your family has a long history of never getting sick, it's still a good idea to get vaccinated, right?
ClamXav is a good free option in my experience.
What version of Mac OS X are you running?
What makes you think you have it?
With later 10.6 and 10.7, but removed in either 10.8 or 10.9, there is a setting in System Preferences > Security > Advanced to download a list of harmful software from the internet. Is that turned on?
You could try ClamXav, which is free and reputable.
- Preview is Ok for most minor editing. GIMP is updated so that X11 is no longer need to run.
- Like /u/blooregard325i said. Use the builtin or "The Unarchiver". Under no reason should you install anything from Stuffit.
- Clam for Mac is pretty good. I set it to just watch my desktop & downloads. If you never install Flash or Java - you might be safe without it.
Two nice tips to help you navigate in the finder:
- Want to rename a folder? Highlight it and press Enter. Then just type.
- Quick Look is awesome. Highlight a picture, press Spacebar. You can use the Up and Down arrows to preview the whole folder quickly.
What makes you believe you need one ?
Assuming you keep everything up to date (all OS updates, Flash updated, Java updated,etc)... you should be pretty well protected. Not 100% (because that's not possible with any OS)... but the risk of infection to Macs is minimal at best.
http://www.clamxav.com/ is a free one. I think companies like ESET, Panda, Sophos and others make options for Mac.
Personally.. I don't think it's worth the time,.. but that's just me.
While you're not likely to get a virus, you can spread them to PC users. It doesn't hurt to have something like ClamXav or Sophos. You won't notice that it's running and it might stop a threat for you someday. I use Sophos, but I really couldn't recommend one over the other because threats are so rare.
Here's a free virus checking application.
You can download and install it and then enable full time antivirus checking in the options.
There are other options that are also free but this one does not interfere with normal Mac usage as much as others.
Be sure to set a schedule in the app for anti-virus definition updates. This can be daily if you like.
I have clamAV installed to scan infected windows drives. I'm sure you could fire it up once a day and scan your entire mac so you feel better. When you actually find something please let us all know.
No, not really. It can't really do anything.
If you wanna feel safe just in case, grab this and run it. If it finds anything, clean it up and you'll be good. But it probably won't even find anything bad.