After an aggravated cyberattack lasting 9 months which even went to the FBI, remote access malware was something I became all too familiar with. A black hat hacker residing in the UK came after me with cyber guns a blazing over a previous relationship at different times with the same man years back. So much happened, but I'll be global. Both my MacBook Pro and IPhone 5 were involved. She began with a root kit for a back door easy peasy. Keylogging not for finance, but to read letters. GMail and Apple passwords were cracked in less than 10 minutes- She would take over mail and ICloud accounts and her nefarious merry mskers would use them for file and doc storage. My IPhone became hers, and I was surfing UK Google while she ran her stocks and apps; padlocking the "private" stuff. Using the MBP as a host for a Phishing Network, and nasty hacker toys like decompression bombs, etc... She hacked my Google web browser via gmail and got me suspended while she surfed cyberterrorism sites.
She bailed in June when I hired a pvt. investigator. Now script kiddies do the work... It ended in December, but the past 72 hrs. began with Norton 360 alerting over an outbound IChat from my device to an IP in Ca. Then, my super restricted Mac OS X.8 was crashing violently as we blocked the connection, and came 5 hits deflected by the firewall. The Console logs showed aborted attempts to start BlueTooth, and directly disable 360 for internet access. System Preferences showed app settings I disabled- now wide open, so the Admin login was hacked. Personal files found all over, and pages to a blog.
360 was intermittently disabled, and is mentioned ongoing in crash logs.
Here's the deal. These files and apps are not moving themselves. A virus is unlikely, but a RAT is pretty intrusive. And FYI, the video light just came on. Those 9 months were a nightmare. Being feisty, I would fight in real time to retain my accounts, and to the exclusion of all else. There IS no perfect security suite. Norton is putting up a good fight, but I will not just watch the MBP get taken over, and possibly get bounced from Facebook and Yelp again for being a security risk. 80 contacts were stolen, and it was too risky to contact friends.
My MacBook Pro was wiped 5 times. Two IPhones and 6 phone numbers. I refuse to go there again. I closed up the MBP at 2:00 pm, and I am walking away. Apple has like over 50 transcripts, and I have 4 notebooks filled with disabled passwords and ID's. I can see this progressing already. The first round cost over five grand.
Time to unload the computer and stop having to use a pseudonym on FB. Taping little monitors is getting really old, too. My geek will do a total wipe, and we can split the profit. I ran it all of a month total. Really sad and frustrating, but no worse than the way I felt when she broke my spirit (almost....).
Thanks for listening. The attacker(s) can have my email accounts. I run a non-internet flip phone in a fake name which I pay cash for just in case. No more online banking. The APP store gets paid with a gift card bought in cash. I WILL be careful, but I won't pay people who question this reality that I live with.
See you on the tech boards, maybe. And change your passwords!