Hidden processes?

I've already posted on the Google Chrome forum's but nobody could help me there. Hopefully someone here can.
I've noticed that spontaneously, Chrome is updating in the background. Growl shows a notification that the chrome update image was mounted and a little bit later it unmounted. This happens when Chrome isn't even open. My questions are:
1) no relevant google update process is running in activity monitor when this happens. Are there hidden processes that are not shown by activity monitor?
2) If there are, how can I view and manage these hidden processes/services?
Thanks for the help.

themacfreak wrote:
Thank you so much for the help! Yes, you are right: there is a com.google.keystone.agent.plist file in my launchagents folder. I can't believe google didn't ask me/tell me that it was installing an autoupdater.
Are you sure you didn't agree to this when you signed up for and/or installed Google material?
Do you have any suggestions on a good program to view launchd .plist?
The "official" way to view .plist files is with the Property List Editor utility, part of the Developer package. You can view the text in a .plist file with TextEdit, although the result is somewhat messy.
Is Lingon a good program even though it is being developed anymore?
I'm not familiar with that program.

Similar Messages

How to launch a hidden process

Hello! I am new to programming for the Macintosh.
I would like to launch a hidden process in a similar way one might do on Windows with CreateProcess by passing SW_HIDE to the startup info, or using ShowWindow(hwnd, SW_HIDE).
I am not interested in "Hiding" the window in the typical Macintosh sense, because the Dock still indicates that the process is running. I don't want to edit the Info.plist file to include LSBackgroundOnly because modifying that file would require elevated access (which I am trying to avoid).
If there was a way to combine the typical Macintosh "Hiding" with the behavior provided by LSBackgroundOnly (preventing the Dock from showing the process) without modifying the Info.plist file, that might be good enough.
Any alternate, completely different approaches are also appreciated.

I accomplished this by doing the following:
I used NSWorkspace's NSWorkspaceLaunchAndHide option to call launchApplicationAtURL. For my usage (but for not all applications) this was enough to hide the launched application's windows.
To prevent the launched application from showing up in the dock (or gaining focus) I modified the application's Info.plist to include the LSBackgroundOnly property.
Because I did not want to require administrator access but needed to modify an application's Info.plist file, I do the following:
1) Create a new <ApplicationName>.app directory in the current user's home directory
2) Copy the target application's Info.plist file to the new directory
3) Modify the copied Info.plist to include the LSBackgroundOnly property
4) Create symbolic links to all the other files/folders in the target application's directory (MacOS, PkgInfo, Resources)
5) Launch from the new <ApplicationName>.app
With that, most applications will start invisibly (no windows, no dock icon, but obviously visible from the Activity Monitor, ps ux, etc).
Some applications still display a window. I've been able to hide this window by (for example) running an AppleScript that tells the application to hide all of its windows, but this solution is inelegant as the window is still usually visible for a fraction of a second. If anyone knows how to handle these edge cases, I would appreciate the help!
Otherwise, I hope this is helpful to anyone else who is trying to accomplish the same effect!

What is backburnerserver? It's a hidden process... What is it doing?

What is backburnerserver? It's a hidden process... here: /usr/discreet/backburner/backburnerServer
What is it doing?

Are you running a product called Autodesk Smoke?
There are references to "backburner_Server" in these AutoDesk support articles:
Useful Mac OS X shell commands
Manually uninstalling Autodesk Smoke for Mac OS X

Outgoing Mail fishy, possible spambot or hidden process?

I've started getting some "Undeliverable mail" messages in my in-box, notably from addresses I have not sent mail to. I'm hoping this is just externally created spam, but I'm wondering if in fact my system has been infected by some sort of auto-mailing spambot. I've looked at the Activity Monitor to see if there are any processes going on that might point to this, but frankly there are a lot of processes I don't recognize (what the heck is "pmTool", anyway?).
Any advice? Following is an example of one of the "undeliverable" messages just received in my Inbox:
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at clickon.me.uk.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
<[email protected]>:
This address no longer accepts mail.
--- Below this line is a copy of the message.
Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Received: (qmail 20998 invoked from network); 3 Aug 2007 05:41:24 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO mac.com) (88.234.158.214)
by clickon.me.uk with SMTP; 3 Aug 2007 05:41:23 -0000
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
From: [email protected]
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: RE:
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 08:25:11 +0300
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
format=flowed;
charset="Windows-1251";
reply-type=original
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.3028
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3028

Jack,
You can obviously see this message was not sent with Mail, but with Outlook Express.
This message is itself likely to be a fraud, and the sender is not a legitimate postmaster, and they hope you will further click on their links.
The somewhat less ominous explanation is that somewhere a PC with your address in its addressbook is infected with a virus that spoofs addresses. The normal routine is for the virus to send from every address in the AB, and to every address in the AB. Those addresses no longer valid are typically generating these messages
In either case it is not you or your Mac doing the sending.
Ernie

When I close firefox it doesn't really close it seems to be hidden. Then when I try to start it again I have to Alt, Ctrl, Del, go to process , turn it off then hit it to start again. I can not get it to open in the hidden process that it is in

Apparently when I close Firefox it doesn't really close. I get told when I try to open Firefox later "Firefox is still open, you must close Firefox, Then reopen it. Then I hit Alt, Ctrl & Del, go to process's then I have to close it then reopen it. It does not open until it is closed in process's.

The process can take a few seconds to close. Sometimes you need to use Task Manager.

Hidden process eats half my CPU (after 10.4.7 install)

I'm running a MBP with the latest firmware previously installed. After updating to 10.4.7, about half of my CPU is consumed, but I can see what's doing it. Neither Activity Monitor nor the shell command "top" shows the culprit, even when viewing all processes.
The problem does disappear when I boot up into safe mode and continues to stay away after I've manually started all of my startup items. I have a strange suspicion that Spotlight is responsible, but, again, it's not showing any CPU-hogging processes.
I've had some other minor annoyances with the update like various preferences appear to have been forgotten and especially Spotlight lost its settings/index, but otherwise, the update functions well, even if I've effectively lost one of my CPUs.
If someone has any advice on tracking this down and killing it, I'd much appreciate it. My MacBookPro was already hot too the touch, now with the CPU running at a minimum of 100/200%, it's down-right scorching! (not to mention the loss of CPU available for MY tasks). I've had to put a USB-powered fan on it just to use it.
MacBookPro 15.4" Mac OS X (10.4) 10.4.6 -> 10.4.7 update

OK. I've tried a more methodical approach to this. I've noticed that my login seems to load just fine, then after some period of time, the CPU goes up and stays up. Usually from 1-5 minutes after login. I also noticed that once this high-cpu-usage occurs, any new process IDs are several thousand higher than the previous process I've run. Clearly this indicates that something is trying to be run, probably failing, then something is trying to run it again.
Rebooting again, I've monitored this whole process by watching top run with a short refresh interval. Sure enough, after a minute or two of logging-in, the action started, and a high frequency of launches of "nmbd" were spotted in top.
Did a "> man nmbd" and found that this is part of the samba package. Next step was to go to the Sharing preference panel, then stop the Windows Sharing. Processor immediately dropped to normal usage. Whew!
Unfortunately, I can't start window sharing again without triggering the heat and loss of cycles, so this isn't quite solved... only narrowed down.
SURELY someone else that has a MBP that has upgraded to 10.4.7 is also running Windows Sharing... why am I the only one with this problem? Can anyone confirm that Windows Sharing works for them in 10.4.7 and a MBP?
Also, how do I fix the problem? Anyone?

Mysterious Hidden Processes

This may well turn out to be unique to me, and anyone else who happens to be using iMovie 6 HD along with a bunch of Slick Effect plug-ins, and also the iStat Pro widget. And it will certainly reveal some gaps in my knowledge, but ! :
I was just now rendering a clip using Slick ( GeeThree ) Color Tuner for some contrast and saturation tweeks. Bringing up Dashboard to see what was goin' on, I was reminded of how often I've seen iMovie hard at work yet often being surpassed by something called "Canon_MP . . . ". ( I don't know how to get iStat to show a full name beyond the " . . . " either ! )
Googling "processes Canon_MP" yielded only 6 irrelevant results.
So my question is, what indeed is this hard-working "Canon_MP . . . " ?
Here's iStat caught in an industrious moment :
[IMG]http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l125/DmRofAtoZ/Picture4.png[/IMG]

David,
There's no reason to sweat the terminology.
Canon's drivers for OS X have sometimes been problematic, and the problem you describe with regard to MP Navigator sounds familiar.
Gutenprint is a set of open-source drivers that lets you use printers without Canon's (or Epson's or HP's) software.
In my experience, it's not a printer driver itself, but rather "Navigator"-style software bundles that cause problems. Scanners and OCR (optical character recognition) software bring their own set of headaches.
Many printer problems could be bypassed in OS X by *not using the manufacturer's disk* to install the driver, since [OS X usually has the appropriate driver built in|http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1370].
Please keep us posted on your progress.
-Wayne

CPU process over 100% usage

On my mountain Lion 10.8.4 version the CPU utilization as reported by "activity monitor" showed a result greater than 100%. The TOR Browser went up to 100.9 % CPU with still further applications running. I have enclosed a screen shot of the exceeding utilization below
This is a serious concern because this may mean a hidden process not being properly reported..
Can anyone give a reason for this error?

It's not hidden. The problem is the Tor browser. Select it then click on the Quit icon and then on the Force Quit button.
Open Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder. Select All Processes from the Processes dropdown menu. Click twice on the CPU% column header to display in descending order. If you find a process using a large amount of CPU time (>=70,) then select the process and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Click on the Force Quit button to kill the process. See if that helps. Be sure to note the name of the runaway process so you can track down the cause of the problem.

IPhone Battery Drain, 7.1.2, I Have A FIX!

Hello everyone! My name is Gabriel Chen and my iPhone has been having trouble with battery draining, and overheating. I'm here to tell you how to fix it. This is completely different from the rest of the posts because I've discovered something interesting and new.
Background (I'm a little long-winded, sorry. Just skip down to "What-to-Do" if you are pretty sure you've had the same problems as me):
I got my iPhone 5s when it first came out. It's battery life was amazing, then the fire nation attacked. Jokes aside, the battery became worthless about a month ago after I updated to 7.1.2. I thought the issue was 7.1.2, but now that I fixed it, I don't think it is. I took my phone into the apple store about a week ago because I was off to college and needed to fix this problem before I left. They ran diagnostics and found kbd and backboard errors. They immediately replaced it. I was happy because I had a brand new phone, but the battery issues came back, and this time even worse. My phone was burning up, even hotter and it even froze sometimes. I then took it to a store near my college–which was difficult because I have no car here–where they did a reset because that's what they always do. I sat there and played with the phone to make sure the problem wasn't there. Turns out it was still there. I love apple genius bar employees, but not all of them are very knowledgeable about the products and how they work. I don't blame them because: updates can always cause new problems, it's probably above their pay-grade to memorize what every single error code means, and they don't necessarily have knowledge that lets them troubleshoot any problems that involve hidden processes that their apple-issued easy-button diagnostic test doesn't tell them about.
I then approached another employee who helped me immensely. He knew something was wrong, which was awesome because most employees do tend to blow you off, so he decided he'd try to help me fix it. He had a lot more knowledge about the phone. This time he found kbd errors again so he replaced it. After that process, he disappeared into the back of the employee's only part of the store. I tried playing around with the phone, and it was clear that the problem persisted. I then went and got help again. This time, the new person who was helping me went to the back, and I waited around for about an hour and a half not knowing what was going on. The whole time, I was wondering where the first guy who helped me disappeared to. For the sake of convenience, the first person who helped me in this paragraph will be Ian, and the second will be Will. Will eventually came back out, this time bringing Ian along with him. Turns out Ian had been doing research for me in the back for the last 1.5 hours and found that the problem probably had to do with iCloud. My phone was draining and overheating due to its attempt to download some sort of data with no success. So each time it failed, it would retry over and over again. This explains the overheating and battery drainage. We deleted some stuff from iCloud and it got a lot better.
The next day though, the problem came back. I was so frustrated so I've been trouble shooting for the past 5 hours. Eventually, after 4 hours, I tried using different iTunes accounts. There was no battery drain when I used these. When I used my original account, there were still problems. So I tried turning off iCloud on my account. Still, I had no luck with it. I eventually tried something else which finally fixed it! My phone now no longer has problems with battery drain and overheating.
What-to-Do
1. Go to Settings —> iCloud —> Delete Account
Don’t worry, as long as you click “keep the stuff” or whatever it says, you won’t lose stuff
2. See if your batter still drains by leaving it on and watching the battery. Touch it and see if it’s heating up. If your battery is draining 1% every 2 minutes, it definitely is still having problems. It’s your own choice, but even if it does drain, I would follow the next step anyways. If it doesn’t drain, the issue definitely had to do with iCloud. Now, log in once again.
3. Make sure all of the iCloud data that you care about is stored some where other than iCloud. For example, make sure your Pages files are on your computer.
4. Go to Settings —> iCloud —> Storage & Backup —> Manage Storage. Then delete the stuff under Documents and Data. I REPEAT, DO NOT DELETE WITHOUT FIRST MAKING SURE THE DATA IS ON YOUR COMPUTER IN SOME SHAPE OR FORM
Why? What is probably happening is that there is probably data that is trying to get onto your phone. This data is failing to do so which is causing an infinite loop of effort and failure which drains your battery and makes your phone work really hard. Apple should code a fail-safe into this to stop the loop, but they haven’t yet.
5. You’re done with this part! For some of you, like me, your phone will stop draining. If so, you’re done! For some of you, it will start draining again! Here’s the part that took me 5 hours to figure out, mostly because I was just frustrated and venting.
6. If you’re still draining, go to Settings —> iTunes and App Store, and turn off SHOW ALL Music and Videos. What this feature does is it will display the purchased items that have not been downloaded, but are on your iTunes account, specifically Music and Videos, within the the corresponding apps. I understand that you probably like this feature and that you’re probably unhappy that I’m telling you to turn it off. This is a glitch or bug that Apple will probably come to fix if it comes to their attention eventually, so don’t worry. When they do fix it, you can turn these back on.
Why? For some reason, the battery drain was being caused either: by the phone failing to fetch data from your iTunes account, pertaining to purchased items such as songs and videos; or by the phone repeatedly fetching the data, instead of just holding it in place.
So, this fixed my phone completely. Please rate me up if that’s even possible. If you’re an Apple dude, I’d love to receive rewards if this was actually useful to you guys (haha, sorry I’m just a little proud of my accomplishment.) If it doesn’t work, try to trouble shoot and figure it out. If you would like clarification, feel free to comment or whatever it’s called. If this doesn't fix it, maybe try getting it replaced in an apple store because that might be the issue.

Thought it had worked but soon found out it had not.
after further days of trying finally, solved it for me Yesterday.
turned off notifications when locked, and bingo, wow.
i have not turned off iCloud but location services are also off.
best thing to do I found was keep checking your usage, settings, general, usage, and flip down to bottom, if the standby and usage are similar there is a problem, if there is a big difference then all is ok. Just keep turning things off and on until the difference is very apparent.
something on my phone was keeping the phone alive even when turned off, and I think this was the phone repeatedly trying to update continually.
to me this is definitely down to the iOS, my wife has exactly same phone and iOS but hers doesn't have any problem and the battery lasts for days.
the guy at the Genius Bar told me to restore the phone via iTunes, not iCloud. This is because iCloud remembers the exact info from your phone and simply reinstates it when you restore, and this includes the iOS too.
when I get home from holidays that's what I'll do, or wait for iOS 8 in few weeks. But I'm so pleased I finally made it work, I was beginning to think ditch the phone and buy Samsung.
anyway anyone out there please try my final solution and let me know if it works for you?

Battery power consumption has gone mad...!

I have an iphone 5 IOS 7.0.4
Suddenly the battery consumption has gone crazy. The phone feels warm and and 100% of power is used over 4hours with phone in standby.
The power lasts if I turn off mobile data. I have no apps running and location services icon is not showing?
I did find that I have used up all of my icloud storage .. I have resolved this issue now..
There seems to be a hidden process that is using power.. I do not know how to track this down... any suggestions please?

Hi and welcome to the community! Since you're new please be sure that you have checked out our Discussion guidelines.
Sorry to hear that you're having issues with battery performance.
I recommend that you first check what's using battery. Charge the battery full and then use the phone as you normally do. When battery level is low, go to Settings -> Power management -> Battery usage. What does it say here? By tapping the apps/functions in the list you can also se how long they have been active.
- Official Sony Xperia Support Staff
If you're new to our forums make sure that you have read our Discussion guidelines.
If you want to get in touch with the local support team for your country please visit our contact page.

Why is Mail trying to connect to an unknown mail server (and how do I stop it)?

Hi - I'm worried that someone has hacked into my system so that it tries to connect to a fake mail server (perhaps to send spam)? I usually have the activity window open when Mail is running, and noticed that it was trying to connect to an unfamiliar mail server the other day - it was shown as an IP address whereas all the mail servers in my mail accounts have names rather than IP addresses ... so I copied the IP address down and searched for it (196.201.4.6), to find that it is run by malawi.net ... in Africa. I recently upgraded to Mac OS Lion, so initially I had figured that it was showing the mail server address differently, but I couldn't think of any reason that my email servers would be in Malawi!
By now I was getting worried: I checked all my mail accounts to be sure that something had not changed, and confirmed that none of my accounts used this mail server (or mentioned the IP address); and confirmed that the "Connecting to server "196.201.4.6"" activity message only appeared when I first reconnected to the internet (i.e. now when I manually clicked on "get mail") ... which suggests to me that it is a hidden process somewhere?
I don't have a virus checker, but downloaded ClamXav and ran a check on my user folders ... but found nothing.
Any thoughts on what this might be, or - if it is something malicious or externally controlled - how I can remove it?
Thanks - andy

Hi - "display remote images in HTML messages" was already deselected, so I don't think it was an HTML message connecting.
But your response made me wonder about whether it was something else in an old email that was causing the problem - I had a search and found some emails from back in 2006 (when I did some work in Malawi for CARE) that were from the mail server (mailer.malawi.net = 196.201.4.6) that has been appearing. However, I still don't understand why (six years later) Mail is now trying to connect to this server ... I'm pretty sure that it never used to happen (and I have been a full-time Mac user since 2003), as I always have the activity window open and would have noticed, so it is only since I upgraded to Lion last week that it started. Any thoughts? I could delete/archive the old emails, but I would really like to understand what is happening?
Thanks - andy

Can't open a pdf file

Hy,
My name is Anne Gelvin and I have a problem with a pdf file that i got from Casey Gelvin. He can open the file on his computer but when i try to open it on mine, it says that it's a corrupt file and won't let me see what is written there. Can anyone help me with this problem? What should i do to open that file?
Thank you

Further... the REASON for converting to Zip
Sending a file by email includes a (hidden) process where the email software looks at the start of the file, and then encodes it accordingly to be able to send the file over the Internet
Many email programs look at the start of a PDF and think it is "type A" when it is really "type B" and therefore use the wrong encoding, so the file arrives corrupted (all actual technical details removed... 'cause I don't know them)
Virtually all email programs know what to do with a Zip file

Any time i open a hotlink i get redirected to one of five websites but nothing shows up with virus/spyware scanning.

the question pretty much describes it. the main problem comes from search engines. pretty much any time i click on a link that opens a new tab or window i get redirected to various sites. the most common sites being aol jobs and yellow pages. i have checked to make sure there are no add-ons causing this and have checked for hidden processes but have found none. any ideas?

Do a malware check with some malware scanning programs. 
You need to scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. 
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan. 
* http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
* http://www.superantispyware.com/ - SuperAntispyware
* http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx - Windows Defender: Home Page
* http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Spybot Search & Destroy
* http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php - Ad-Aware Free
See also:
* "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked
* https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Searches+are+redirected+to+another+site
If using the above listed scanners does not fix it or if you are blocked from installing those scanners then ask advice on one of the forums that specialize in malware removal mentioned in the Popups_not_blocked article.

How to remove rootkits and malware?

I have downloaded and ran the programme Rootkit Hunter and the results are worrying.
I don't know much about malware other than a malicious individual has persistently been installing it onto my machines via malicious emails - this time targeting my iPhone 4 (which I promptly got rid of upon discovering this individual's presence and replaced with a new Samsung S4, which is probably infected as well now) first; and from there using my house Wifi network to get onto my Macbook Pro 10.8.3 (which is the machine I am on now, and the machine the results refer to); and also my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1; and most likely the phones and computers belonging to other members of my family are compromised as well.
The following are the worrying results identified by Rootkit Hunter:
For "Checking LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable", it says in yellow "skipped".
For "Checking for hidden processes", it also says in yellow "skipped".
I also have red warning notices in relation to system configuration file checks and filesystem checks alerting me to the following:
"Checking if SSH protocol v1 in allowed The SSH configuration option 'Protocol' has not been set";
"Checking if syslog remote logging is allowed Syslog configuration file allows remote logging: install.* .0.1:32376"
"Checking /dev for suspicious file types Suspicious file types found in /dev: /dev/fd/6: MS Windows icon resource"
"Checking for hidden files and directories Hidden file found: /usr/share/man/man5/. rhosts.5: troff or preprocessor input text".
I do not know how to interpret these results other than of course realising they are alerting me to the fact that something is wrong and needs fixing.
I do not know exactly what Rootkit Hunter is telling me is wrong, and I do not know how to fix the problems it has identified.
I would greatly appreciate it if anybody could perhaps tell me how I can do these things. And any advice on which programmes to use for my Samsung machines and the best way to protect my devices in the future would also be greatly appreciated.

First, before I respond on specific points, I'd like you to take a look at my web site:
http://www.thesafemac.com
...just so you can see what qualifications I have for speaking about this topic. I'm not just blowing wind, as many folks on forums can do sometimes.
I was sent a dodgy email to the old iPhone 4 [...], and I clicked on it, had a quick look at it and quickly deleted it.[...] I did not know at the time that just opening them can open the door for malware to install itself onto given device
That is absolutely not true... at least, not using the Mail app on either a Mac or an iOS device. Opening an e-mail message does not do anything that could run unauthorized code on your machine, so there's absolutely no way that any kind of malware could have been installed just by opening and viewing an e-mail message. If you opened a malicious attachment, of course, that could infect your Mac with something, but only if it somehow managed to bypass all of the Mac's built-in security. On an iPhone, the only code allowed to run must be downloaded from the App Store, so it's not possible for any code attached to an e-mail message to run.
I reached over to phone and when I picked up I saw that it was asking me for my Wifi password. [...] I checked and it was Wifi was off, but when I tapped Wifi and opened it, underneath it was revealed that it was actually on - same with Bluetooth etc.
Sounds like a glitch with the phone. That's definitely not evidence of malware.
the person had half an hour to crack my parents' home 10 character Wifi network from the Iphone 4
If your wifi network actually got hacked (you don't say how you know that it was), it is probably mis-configured to allow remote administration with no password or with the router's default password. That definitely wouldn't be something they did via the iPhone.
The person even taunts me that they can see exactly what I am doing on them - they can see all my pictures; wallpapers; know what online radio stations that I listen to; read my emails; watch me playing video games; and know everything I type in my browser; and what I don't type as well via screenshots. I know this because they confirm to me.
There are a few possible explanations for that. One is that this person has gotten access to some online account of yours that gives them access to your machines. For example, if your Apple ID/iCloud account is hacked, depending on the settings on your computer and how you use iCloud, that person can see a lot of your data, locate all your devices and even potentially get access to your Mac via Back to My Mac.
If you use other remote access software, such as LogMeIn, that would explain the issue on all the machines. The LogMeIn account (or whatever other remote access account you have) has been compromised.
It's also possible that your hacker has somehow gotten access to your network such that he/she can see all the network traffic being sent and received. This could expose passwords and other sensitve information that could lead to gaining access to cloud-based data or accessing your computer via some remote access software that you have already installed.
Another possibility is that this person has a local accomplice who is able to get physical access to your machines, and who has installed remote access software of some kind. With physical access, a knowledgeable person can do a lot!
What is really not a likely possibility is for all these machines to be simultaneously and transparently infected with malware remotely. Each device would have to be infected with something completely different, through different means, and each of these pieces of malware would have to get past the protections running on each system. (To see more about what protection is built in on Mac OS X, see How does Mac OS X protect me?.)
I hear what you say about the iPhone, but I have been reading news articles online recently which actually claim it is the least secure phone.
I'm not sure what news site you were looking at... probably not a reputable one! Android has gotten a reputation for being the most insecure system on the planet, while iOS is known to all but a few biased detractors as being quite secure. Take a look here, for example:
http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/08/26/internal-us-government-memo-warns-author ities-about-android-malware-threats/
Fixing it so my devices aren't recognisable to snoopers on a network is also somewthing which I am interested in knowing how to do.
Well, the first order of business is to find out if this is all just a bunch of smoke-and-mirrors on the part of the person harassing you, or if they have actually gained access to something. If they have access, you need to find out what and how.
I'd advise changing passwords on ALL online accounts, resetting the wifi router to factory defaults and setting it up securely, and installing Little Snitch on your Mac. (Little Snitch is difficult to configure correctly, and will warn you about all kinds of normal processes. You will learn a lot about what your Mac connects to on a daily basis, and if there's actually any hacking going on, Little Snitch should catch it and prevent it.)
I'd also advise you to take a look at my Mac Malware Guide for more information on what kind of malware threats are out there, how your Mac protects you and what you need to do to stay safe.

Urgent: Huge diff in total redo log size and archive log size

Dear DBAs
I have a concern regarding size of redo log and archive log generated.
Is the equation below is correct?
total size of redo generated by all sessions = total size of archive log files generated
I am experiencing a situation where when I look at the total size of redo generated by all the sessions and the size of archive logs generated, there is huge difference.
My total all session redo log size is 780MB where my archive log directory size has consumed 23GB.
Before i start measuring i cleared up archive directory and started to monitor from a specific time.
Environment: Oracle 9i Release 2
How I tracked the sizing information is below
logon as SYS user and run the following statements
DROP TABLE REDOSTAT CASCADE CONSTRAINTS;
CREATE TABLE REDOSTAT
AUDSID NUMBER,
SID NUMBER,
SERIAL# NUMBER,
SESSION_ID CHAR(27 BYTE),
STATUS VARCHAR2(8 BYTE),
DB_USERNAME VARCHAR2(30 BYTE),
SCHEMANAME VARCHAR2(30 BYTE),
OSUSER VARCHAR2(30 BYTE),
PROCESS VARCHAR2(12 BYTE),
MACHINE VARCHAR2(64 BYTE),
TERMINAL VARCHAR2(16 BYTE),
PROGRAM VARCHAR2(64 BYTE),
DBCONN_TYPE VARCHAR2(10 BYTE),
LOGON_TIME DATE,
LOGOUT_TIME DATE,
REDO_SIZE NUMBER
TABLESPACE SYSTEM
NOLOGGING
NOCOMPRESS
NOCACHE
NOPARALLEL
MONITORING;
GRANT SELECT ON REDOSTAT TO PUBLIC;
CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER TR_SESS_LOGOFF
BEFORE LOGOFF
ON DATABASE
DECLARE
PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION;
BEGIN
INSERT INTO SYS.REDOSTAT
(AUDSID, SID, SERIAL#, SESSION_ID, STATUS, DB_USERNAME, SCHEMANAME, OSUSER, PROCESS, MACHINE, TERMINAL, PROGRAM, DBCONN_TYPE, LOGON_TIME, LOGOUT_TIME, REDO_SIZE)
SELECT A.AUDSID, A.SID, A.SERIAL#, SYS_CONTEXT ('USERENV', 'SESSIONID'), A.STATUS, USERNAME DB_USERNAME, SCHEMANAME, OSUSER, PROCESS, MACHINE, TERMINAL, PROGRAM, TYPE DBCONN_TYPE,
LOGON_TIME, SYSDATE LOGOUT_TIME, B.VALUE REDO_SIZE
FROM V$SESSION A, V$MYSTAT B, V$STATNAME C
WHERE
A.SID = B.SID
AND
B.STATISTIC# = C.STATISTIC#
AND
C.NAME = 'redo size'
AND
A.AUDSID = sys_context ('USERENV', 'SESSIONID');
COMMIT;
END TR_SESS_LOGOFF;
Now, total sum of REDO_SIZE (B.VALUE) this is far less than archive log size. This at time when no other user is logged in except myself.
Is there anything wrong with query for collecting redo information or there are some hidden process which doesnt provide redo information on session basis.
I have seen the similar implementation as above at many sites.
Kindly provide a mechanism where I can trace which user is generated how much redo (or archive log) on a session basis. I want to track which all user/process are causing high redo to generate.
If I didnt find a solution I would raise a SR with Oracle.
Thanks
[V]

You can query v$sess_io, column block_changes to find out which session generating how much redo.
The following query gives you the session redo statistics:
select a.sid,b.name,sum(a.value) from v$sesstat a,v$statname b
where a.statistic# = b.statistic#
and b.name like '%redo%'
and a.value > 0
group by a.sid,b.name
If you want, you can only look for redo size for all the current sessions.
Jaffar

Hidden processes?

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