Malware on my Mac

[Stephanie]

Hello, 

My wife downloaded a photo transfer program on her MacBook Air and I guess she overlooked unchecking the additional throw ins items that the program installed along with the main program. She now has Chromium and many other unwanted programs on her Mac. She thought she took the steps to uninstall Chromium but alas, its still there. Can you please provide assistance to remove all the malware that has been installed onto her computer?

 

Thanks so much

[alvarnell]

If she runs Malwarebytes for Mac it will remove any malware that was installed.

I'm guessing you meant to say the Google Chrome browser needs to be removed. You'll need to contact Google for that. Instructions appear to be here.

[Stephanie]

Hi there. I did not mean Google Chrome. There is something on her desktop now that says chromium. I'm fairly certain that the Chrome open source program got installed somehow when she installed the photo transfer program. This is in addition to multiple other files that were added to her computer. Is there a way we can run a diagnostics check and give that to you so you can see what has been put on there? Thank you.

[alvarnell]

In that case you will need to work with the Chromium Project. There are some instructions here that are supposed to work, but may require her to re-install ChromeOS to use it.

I'm confident that the Malwarebytes staff won't assist you with the removal of anything but malware and they certainly don't want you to post any diagnostics here, but your certainly free to open a ticket with them here and they should get back to you tomorrow when they get to work.

You'll likely have better luck with this on the Apple Community Support Forum or the Chromium Forum.

 

[treed]

Chromium is a legitimate application, and as such Malwarebytes won't remove it. However, it has been abused by some adware installers lately.

Deleting the Chromium app should be sufficient, but it may have been placed somewhere out of the way by an adware installer, to make it harder to remove. Try searching for Chromium in the Finder, and dragging it to the trash from wherever it has been placed.

[Stephanie]

Thanks for your suggestion. I really appreciate it.  The problem is that along with Chromium, a bunch of other files backdated to 2016 (all from the same date) were also loaded onto the computer along with Chromium....Should I just delete them regularly? I am not sure if other malicious files were also put onto the computer in addition to the Chromium and crapware files....Is there any diagnostic I can run and submit to you so you can see what should be removed?

 

Thanks so much!

[treed]

Without knowing more about those files, I cannot recommend that you delete them. I definitely would caution you against looking through folders you're not familiar with and removing files based on things like the creation date. I've seen people damage their systems, necessitating a reinstall, or even lose personal data by doing things like that.

If, after removing Chromium, you are not having any other symptoms of adware (ads that shouldn't be there, inappropriate pop-ups in or outside the web browser, web searches not going through your chosen search engine, being redirected to unfamiliar sites, etc), then there is probably nothing to worry about. However, if you continue to have symptoms of adware, and Malwarebytes is not detecting anything, then further investigation would be warranted.