A common assumption of most people is that Mac devices are not affected by any malware, viruses or other threats. While this is true in a majority of cases, there are still a few systems around the world that do get affected by malware.
Malware is essentially a combination of two words “malicious” and “software”. It describes all the hostile and intrusive program codes including viruses, spyware, worms, Trojans, and so on.
If your system does get infected by a malware, let us first look at the symptoms that you might come across:
- Mac runs slower than usual. Some background software is using most of the resources.
- The web searches are taken away from your usual search page, to a site you’ve never heard of. The results that appear on the page are also fake.
- Most, if not all the web pages you visit are filled with advertisements, even those pages that you did not expect to see advertisements on, such as Wikipedia.
- Advertising windows show up on your desktop, completely unrelated to the webpages you are visiting.
If you did find any of the above symptoms, do not panic. Some genuine apps can behave erratically at times and Mac can slow down due to a host of other reasons.
One thing you shouldn’t do is google search for best antivirus software for Mac or similar kind of searches. Most of these results are malware themselves. It puts you in a, even more, deeper fix.
How malware ends up on your system?
- Malicious software: It could appear as a genuine software that you downloaded after getting to know of the infection. It could have arrived at your device via email or messenger.
- Fake updates: This appears like a dialog box when you are browsing or installing a plugin.
- Fake files: The malware can be disguised as an image file, word processing or a PDF document that you open normally. It would have a fake file extension.
Mac’s inbuilt protection
Apple has several mechanisms in place to guard against malware and viruses.
- File Quarantine: If you try to open an app you have downloaded, you will get a warning telling where you got the file from and when you downloaded it.
If that app doesn’t contain a digital signature by its creator, which in turn requires a signature from Apple, you will be blocked from accessing it.
- XProtect: This is linked to File Quarantine. When you try to open files you’ve downloaded, it first checks for known malware or viruses, if it finds any, you will be told to trash them.
Tips to follow to protect yourself
Let us look at some precautions that you can employ to safeguard from malware, virus and other threats.
- Avoid passwords: Do not type any passwords or login details where a hidden keylogger is active.
This keylogger-based malware takes screenshots. It is advised not to copy and paste passwords from documents or click Show password box that comes with dialog boxes.
- Shut down the system and Restore: Shut down your Mac and restore it from a recent backup, if you remember the restore point, the time before you believe your system got infected.
- Clear cache: If you haven’t been able to restore from a backup, clear your browser’s cache.
In Google Chrome, go to Chrome -> Clear Browsing Data. In Time Range drop-down box, select All Time. Then click Clear Data.
- Empty Downloads folder: Drag all the files in Downloads folder to Trash. Now empty the Trash.
- Change your passwords: Once all the malware or infections are cleaned, change all your passwords, including websites, emails, cloud services, apps and so on.
- Reinstall macOS: If you are still unsure whether the infection has been completely cleared, entirely reinstall your macOS.
Recover data using Hi5 Photo Recovery for Mac
If you lost important photos, videos or other media files when trying any of the above methods, you can recover all your data using Hi5 Photo Recovery for Mac software.
The photo recovery tool shows you in some simple steps on how to recover deleted photos from macbook.
With this software, you can recover RAW images as well. Other types of files that can be retrieved using this tool include PNG, TIFF, JPG, MOV, WMV, MP4, MP3 and so on.
All kinds of hard drives, USB drives, memory cards, FireWire drives, memory sticks are supported by the software. File systems supported by the software include HFS+, HFSX, and FAT.
Just download the software, follow some simple on-screen instructions to recover all your data with ease.
