Though it's not easy to hack into or break through a Mac's security, it is possible, especially if someone accidentally installs malware without realizing it. If your Mac is running slow or you're seeing unusual advertisements within your web browser you might have accidentally installed malware at some point. Don't worry. It happens to the best of us (not me, of course). There are things you can do without having to burn it all down.
The problem: Mac malware in the Library folder
Serenity Caldwell writing for iMore in 2017:
My father-in-law's MacBook Pro had been running into curious slowdowns for a two-year-old laptop and he kept on seeing weird sites taking over his Safari and Firefox search bars. It was clear to me that his browser had been hijacked.
We got rid of the browser hijack pretty quickly — I suggest using Cella's excellent how-to if you ever run into a browser hijack yourself — but the slowdowns were more curious. Upon further investigation, I found a couple of self-professed 'Mac security programs' that popped up, demanding money to 'clean your Mac from junk'.
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Spoiler: These programs were the junk. And worst of all, they'd seemingly added a bunch of nonsense files into this computer's Library folder, with random folder names like 'prestidigitation' and 'beeswax'.
Now, I want to preface: I'd never seen an attack like this on a Mac before in my life, and finding this kind of full-Mac hijack is very rare. It's likely that he accidentally installed one of these 'security' programs (or had it installed), which spiraled out of control from there.
These hijacks didn't appear to be able to do much beyond slow down his machine with endless failed attempts to run a program — the process didn't have admin permissions, so it couldn't execute a thing from the library. But because they were there, they were constantly crashing aspects of his Mac. I knew I had a malfunctioning laptop on my hands, so I turned to my age-old troubleshooting checklist.
How to fix a corrupted Mac
How to stop recommended popup mac adware cleaner a scam. If you're working on a computer that has slowed down beyond reasonable aging or is otherwise acting beyond the pale, here are my favorite tactics you can take to try and restore it to its former glory.
Update the system software
This is almost always the first thing I do when troubleshooting Macs: Chances are, the user hasn't installed a security update or other software updates that may be slowing their computer to a crawl.
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If the computer is running macOS Sierra, you can avoid having to do this troubleshooting step in the future by turning on Automatic Install in System Preferences, which can automatically download newly available updates in the background, and install them overnight.
Check the disk for errors
If software updates aren't doing the trick, the next thing to check is the hard drive itself. With Apple's Internet Recovery partition, fixing a cranky drive is an easy process.
Your Mac will then run a cursory check on its hard drive to determine if there's anything wrong — and if so — if it can fix it.
Reset the NVRAM/PRAM and SMC
If neither app updates nor disk repair are helping, sometimes a good cache flush can get your Mac running just a bit more smoothly.
To reset the NVRAM (or, on older Macs, PRAM), reboot the Mac and hold down the following keyboard command during startup for at least twenty seconds: Command-Option-P-R.
After you reset your NVRAM, you may be required to reconfigure some system settings (like sound and time zones), which are stored in that cache.
An SMC reset is a bit more complicated, and Apple recommends it only after all other troubleshooting avenues have been exhausted.
If you're using a laptop:
If you're using a desktop:
Partition your disk (or erase it)
After exhausting all other avenues, this was the solution we came across to properly fix the broken laptop. The hard drive had been so corrupted by these 'security' programs that there was nothing I could do to fix it. When Safari launched over the login screen after a reboot, I knew my usual fixes wouldn't work: It was time to bring out the big guns.
In most cases, I'd grab an external drive, back up the corrupted disk, then wipe the drive clean with the Internet Recovery partition and start over. But there were a couple of reasons that wouldn't work here:
Given that this laptop had a 500GB hard drive — only 40GB of which was being used — I had an alternate idea: I'd partition the drive, again using Internet Recovery, and install macOS Sierra on the new partition. Essentially, it would be a 'clean' new computer for my father-in-law to work on, but all the original data would still exist on the old partition in case he needed to grab a file.
Note: In order to partition your drive, you'll need enough free space on your drive to do so — at least 30GB. If you're light on space, you may want to back up your corrupted disk to a USB drive, instead.
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Disk Utility will check the disk and make changes. This will take several minutes.Disk Utility will then make the changes. After that's completed, quit Disk Utility to return to the main Internet Recovery menu.
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After you finish setting up the new hard drive, it's time to move your files over. Because of the way partitioning works, your old hard drive partition will show up next to your currently-active partition, just like an external drive; you can then grab any files you need from it.
Note: If you want to copy over applications, I'd strongly suggest redownloading them from the source — the Mac App Store or the company's website — rather than trying to copy them over from the old partition.
From here, you can follow instructions for setting a Mac up from scratch when it comes to installing and customizing anything else.
I generally recommend keeping the old drive partition around for at least a few months in case you or your family member forgets to move something over; after that period, however, you can easily delete the old partition and move to the new partition full time.
Consider additional anti-malware protection
While malware on the Mac is rare, it does crop up, as we've demonstrated. Having the right tools to get rid of malware can be an important part of keeping your Mac safe and secure. There are a number of tools that you can choose from, including popular programs like BitDefender and Kaspersky, that will help you keep malware from infecting your Mac.
Questions?
Do you have any must-follow troubleshooting steps? Let us know in the comments.
Updated July 2019: Added a sub-section regarding anti-malware protection.
Serenity Caldwell contributed to an earlier version of this guide.
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We know what everyone is going to say once they read this article. You’re a Microsoft fanboy. So, we’re going to say that Linux is great, and we know that it has so many advantages over Windows.
There have been articles floating around on the net talking about Linux vs. Windows, about how Linux is catching up to Windows and there is a Linux revolution coming. All of that is great and we all hope it happens. Competition in any industry is a good thing. Just think if there was only one company providing Internet service to 90 percent of the globe. Prices for just having Internet service would be huge. Since there are at least 5 different providers in any given city, prices will be as low as possible.
But why isn’t everybody using Linux?
Windows has two competitors Mac and Linux. The reason why Windows has a huge piece of the pie is because Mac OS only runs on Mac’s expensive (but really beautiful) hardware and the two Windows competitors don’t run what people are used to using. Advocates for Linux would say that there are many free alternatives for Linux that are better than their Windows counterparts and are free to use. We totally agree with them but think of it this way.
We all buy ketchup. Most of us prefer the name brand ketchup over the no name stuff even if they are completely the same. Why? We grew up using the name brand so everything seems slightly off. People stick with what they know, it’s human nature and that kind of thinking will never change.
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Okay back to our story, why isn’t Linux popular as Windows? Can’t Linux never triumph over Windows? We have a few proposals to help Linux overcome the Windows monopoly.
5 Ways To Make Linux More Interactive Than Windows: –1. Use NTFS natively
Just allow users to have 2 NTFS partitions, one for Linux and one for Windows. Another reason you would want this is if you wanted to switch to Linux you could just get rid of Windows and still be able to use your files on other NTFS partitions without having to go through the whole NTFS driver install for Linux. No matter what anyone says it’s never seamless.
2. Streamline the OS install process
So many distributions install a bunch of apps to show people what great stuff is out there. However, it would be great if an install asks you the standard setup questions like partitioning and in the end of the whole processes you are left with a blank slate that has everything you need to install the applications you want. Example, we did an install of a new popular Linux distro. The whole setup was default and once done we noticed that Firefox was not installed. Not a problem we’ll just install it. Once we tried we found that we needed to go to the package manager and install a missing package needed for Firefox to run. Why people?
Firefox is becoming a standard. Why would you make it hard for a newcomer to install and use it? There are several distro’s this happens in and we just don’t get why.
3. Streamline the application install process
We have a dream, if this is possible someone please direct us where we can get it. We would love to be able to go to any site and download any Linux application, double click on it, and go through a wizard to install it. As an end result have an icon on the desktop or the launching menu and be able to double click on that icon to use the application without any problems.
We know there are package managers out there that streamline the processes, but people shouldn’t have to go into an application to install another. Uncompressing? Fine, no issues with that. The process to install an application is long enough as is. Why make it harder than it needs to be.
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4. Have some sort of consistency between major distro’s:
We aren’t asking for all distro’s to be the same. To make it easy for new users to choose between solutions. Keep things like hardware and software configuration the same across the board. If you make it so, all of the major distro’s can work on the same machines there is no worries about compatibility. People can focus on what really makes a distro different and better than the others.
5. Find a way to Run Windows apps without any system configuration:
This is huge. So many have tried and fallen short. Make it so a person can take an executable game or application, and have it work just like it would on Windows. If this happened it would be all over for Windows.
Why would a person pay 300 bucks for Windows when the little cost or free alternative plays your favorite games or runs your applications just like Windows? Then sell people on the Linux software.
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So, there you have it. Our thoughts on Why isn’t Linux popular as Windows. Again, Linux is still so good in so many ways. It just has a long way to go before it becomes really mainstream. When we say mainstream we mean a non-techie goes to the store and picks up his Linux computer.
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