Jump to content

A simple puzzle.


Recommended Posts

Hi there, I appreciate any help you can offer.

Before yesterday I had never heard of Malwarebytes and I'm trying to solve a simple puzzle by way of introduction to the software.

I took my Macbook Pro in for a service recently, when I went to collect it the technician said he had found a virus which he had placed in the Trash.

The 'virus' he found was called Spigot, and had a few .xpi and safari extension files in its folder. (The date on the Spigot folder was 2015 - around the time I first purchased the Macbook).

I trust the technician but I was curious to see if I could find what he'd done in terms of servicing the machine. So I looked through Library and Library/Application support to see what files had been modified recently.

I found a Malwarebytes folder from a couple months ago (I don't recall installing this - as I said, never heard of malware bytes before now). In this folder:

Library/ApplicationSupport/Malwarebytes/MBAM 

the 'Logs' , 'Quarantine' , and 'Settings' folders had all been modified at the time the technician was working on my machine.

Can anyone help me to understand what may have originally created the Malwarebytes folder and further, what the tech was up to modifying it?

I sincerely appreciate your help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

My suspicious would be that the technician installed it in order to check for malware and used it to find and trash the Spigot infection. If the Malwarebytes app isn't in your /Applications folder, then he probably deleted it when finished, but didn't remove any of the associated files.

Malwarebytes has a great reputation among troubleshooters and is often recommended to users on the Apple Community Support forum when they complain about unexplained performance issues on their Mac.

Spigot, by the way is just adware (not technically a virus) so it should not have caused any permanent damage to your computer. Perhaps you previously saw unexplained redirects and pop-up ads when using your browser. That should be fixed with the deletion of the Spigot files you mentioned.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks alvarnell, that makes sense, and confirms my own suspicions.

I only wonder about the timestamp on the Malwarebytes folder that is a few months old. Maybe the tech used a previous install not from a .dmg - ran it off a USB for example, and it created the Library folder, but then that would have generated a new time stamp.

Anyway, not an issue just a question by way of getting a better understanding of OSX. I'm going to look further into using malwarebytes in the future to use myself. 

Thank you.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
Back to top
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

This site uses cookies - We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.