How to detect if my computer has been hacked

I received an "error message" today on my MacBook Pro indicating that someone else was using the same IP address as my computer on my network. A little while later a friend forwarded an email to us that looks like it cloned an email account. I'm curious if anyone knows if these events might be related, and if so, how you can check to see if your computer has been hacked? Thanks much!
Georgebob

The "same IP address" error is pretty common. It pretty much never indicates your computer has been hacked. If you have lots of devices on your local network, this can happen. I assume you're using DHCP but this depends on your router (Airport Extreme, Linksys, other?) etc. I hope your wireless network is encrypted (preferably with WPA2); if your wireless network is not encrypted then you may have 47 of your neighbors and 4 people in cars out on the street surfing **** on your Internet connection and downloading illegal material. But that's not a hacked Mac, that's just bad form on your part ;-)
As far as the forwarded email: I'm unsure what you're referring to. Looks like it cloned what email account?
At any rate, no, I don't think the events are related. Duplicate IP addresses can happen due to DHCP leases and sleeping machines and having iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, and Macs on the same network. The machines will work around it and it's rarely a sign of being hacked if you have control over your network.

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How do I know If my computer has been hacked?

I think my Mac just got hacked into. I was working on a doc. that had personnel information- names. Phone #s and my home street address. my mac book pro froze up and when it unfroze, all of the names, phone#s and my address changed to ?/-\|# After I stared at the screen w disbelief for less than 1 sec. Word closed it down. After 2 min. Word brought the 2 word doc. I was working on back onto the screen. I looked at the personnel info, and saw the names, phone numbers and my street address in numbers and words. It looked like as if nobody touched my Mac. What should I do? I need help badly. If my computer has been hacked, the information they took, can they steal identity, credit card #s with just phone #s and first&last names besides my street address. I havent touched my computer since thus happened. I'm my iPhone. Should I turn off my computer? Also ididnt save the doc. I was working on. a box came up and said "this file is read-only. To save a copy, click OK and give the document a new namein the Save dialog box( AutoRecovery save of document1)". What should I do? I'm not making this up. I watched everything without realizing what happened. Should I have turned my computer off while it was in the middle of the proscess? Help! Help!

You have not been hacked. Something went wrong with Word and it crashed, and something must have reopened Word. (The system will usually ask if you want to reopen a crashed app... did you see such a message?) Word must have simply reopened the docs you had open when it crashed.
It's actually quite difficult to hack a Mac, and pretty much requires you to help out by opening it up for potential access by hackers.

I believe my computer has been hacked.

I belong to a google group and receive emails from the group. I was told by the adminstrator (University of Illinois) that my computer was responsible for sending out spam and that I should change my password. Excatly what should I do if my computer has been hacked? I use yahoo for my email and sometimes directly from my mac. I did see that my "Console" showed up on my dashboard and several lines said "swallowed up". If anyone has an explanation as to what may have happed and how to fix it I would appreciate it.

I doubt your computer has been hacked, it's more likely that your email account has been hacked. There's big business in firstly finding email addresses and secondly cracking them, either through Windows malware, password guessing or exploits against the email provider. Change your email password, and to be sure, your Mac's password.

How do I know if my computer has been hacked into?

I am having two issues with my iMac. One is with my wireless -- in the past few days I've received a few times an IP address error, which seems to be solved by renewing the DHCP lease and restarting. Also, at the login screen when I restart, it takes two tries to log in -- on the first one, my password only partially registers and the screen "bounces", then the second try works. Could this mean that my computer has been compromised? We had some workmen alone in our flat while we were away recently, so there are a few people who've had access to the physical machine as well. Thanks for any help.

You have not been hacked. Something went wrong with Word and it crashed, and something must have reopened Word. (The system will usually ask if you want to reopen a crashed app... did you see such a message?) Word must have simply reopened the docs you had open when it crashed.
It's actually quite difficult to hack a Mac, and pretty much requires you to help out by opening it up for potential access by hackers.

How can you find out if your computer has been hacked

For some reason, I couldn't find any information on how I can tell if someone has hacked into my computer or not.
I have an iMac:
Model Name:    iMac
Model Identifier:    iMac8,1
Processor Name:    Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:    2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors:    1
Total Number Of Cores:    2
L2 Cache:    6 MB
Memory:    2 GB
Bus Speed:    1.07 GHz
I was trying to save something on the computer and noticed that a co-worker's name was under the SHARED section in one of mu folders. He was in my computer! How can I find that information? His name was actually listed so I know he was on there. I even texted him then he stopped.
I have Verizon DSL and and older version of Norton Firewall (4).
He's my subordinate and we don't usually have problems. What do I do?

You probably made your system available to him by opening File Sharing. Open System Preferences - Sharing - File Sharing and look under Users. I you see it's open to him or everyone then highlight that and click the - symbol to remove them.
If you are using Norton then remove it following Norton's instructions. Their software tends to create more issues than it solves. OS X has a firewall built into it (System Preferences - Security - Firewall tab) so having a redundant firewall is unnecessary and a waste of system resources and a waste of money.

Just found out my computer has been hacked through firefox. do you have a scan to prevent this from happening

Facebook informed me that my account had been accessed from somewhere in Washington using my browser, Firefox.

Thanks for your comments. I generally keep it quite secure. I did open it up for a short time to serve some e-mail accounts. But, shut that down when all this happened. I also do intend to become somewhat of an expert on this, and I have read a lot on many sites over the past few days before posting here. However nothing I could find answered my questions directly.
As for the post being general, the first 3 paragraphs were to describe what happened. I just figured that the background might be helpful. The question(s) themselves were in the fourth paragraph. I guess I might have been vague. So, let me try to restate them again.
My questions are as follows: (1) do the facts that I have relayed give a strong indication that my computer was hacked into or could they just be erroneous behavior? (2) How can I tell if someone has logged into my system (whether they hacked in or not); and (3) where can I find in the system when someone has logged in and for how long they were logged into my computer (again, whether they had permission or not)? Seems like the answer to both of these questions should be in a log file somewhere.
A bonus would be if I could track where they were and what files they accessed, but I believe that is not possible under OS X, without some extra software that I did not have installed at the time.
Thanks again. I appreciate any input here. It is unnerving to have someone access your computer without permission.

I think my computer has been hacked.

Safari cant verify any websites at all, weird things keep changing and there is a new guest account that I can not go on. Also, I tried to do a security update and I would not work. Help please im just a teenage girl that knows little to nothing about computers!

Thanks for your comments. I generally keep it quite secure. I did open it up for a short time to serve some e-mail accounts. But, shut that down when all this happened. I also do intend to become somewhat of an expert on this, and I have read a lot on many sites over the past few days before posting here. However nothing I could find answered my questions directly.
As for the post being general, the first 3 paragraphs were to describe what happened. I just figured that the background might be helpful. The question(s) themselves were in the fourth paragraph. I guess I might have been vague. So, let me try to restate them again.
My questions are as follows: (1) do the facts that I have relayed give a strong indication that my computer was hacked into or could they just be erroneous behavior? (2) How can I tell if someone has logged into my system (whether they hacked in or not); and (3) where can I find in the system when someone has logged in and for how long they were logged into my computer (again, whether they had permission or not)? Seems like the answer to both of these questions should be in a log file somewhere.
A bonus would be if I could track where they were and what files they accessed, but I believe that is not possible under OS X, without some extra software that I did not have installed at the time.
Thanks again. I appreciate any input here. It is unnerving to have someone access your computer without permission.

Is there some way to test to see if my computer has been hacked?

Can someone tell me how I can test my computer to determine if it has or is being hacked?
Thanks

lindafromwhittier wrote:
Dave
...what is filevault? And now that you know the firewall was off, does that mean it could have been hacked?
Not Dave, but I'll try to give you some answers.
In System Preferences->Security click on the "?" in the lower left hand corner to learn how to make your computer more secure. When you finish doing that type "About FileVault" in the search box in the upper left corner of Mac Help to learn what filevault is. It has been known to cause issues with backups and if you forget your password there is no way to recover the information in your home folder. They have revamped this capabiltiy in Lion (FileVault 2) to improve it, but I don't think users have had much of a chance to check it out to see how capable it is. Since I don't use it I hesitate to comment.
It's slightly more probable that you have been hacked with the firewall off through remote access, but now much.
Since I already paid for MacKeeper- thinking it was an Apple product, and seeing what is known about their ethics - which does matter to me, can I really get rid of it, thoroughly?
MacKeeper support says that you can completely remove it by dragging it to the trash and answering a question about why you don't want it. After you do that, the uninstaller is supposed to remove everything. Users have found that their keychain still contained passwords for mackeeper or zeobit which shouldn't cause any problems. A user the other day said they searched their hard drive and found three left over files, but I don't think they ran the uninstaller. Depending on what features you activate you may have to Log out or restart your computer to completely stop the processes running in the background, but the uninstaller should have taken care of that, as well.
If you decide to uninstall it and want a list of the known places to look for files let me know and I'll provide you with the list I have.

How to detect if droid 2 has been in moisture phone

My phone will not come on when on charge the charge light does not come on and the screen flashes the motorola icon but will not come on

What you describe sounds like a possible boot loop, have you tried clearing System Cache..
Power off
Power On Holding Home Key
When "Andy" with Exlamation Point Shows up Press BOTH Volume keys
Use Volume Keys to navigate to "wipe cache partition" and tap power button to select
Wait for it to finish and select reboot system
Its strange that you ask about water exposure because it sounds like something may have happened to make you think that it was exposed to water... Usually there is a moister sticker on battery and under battery cover that washes off or fade when exposed to water...

I think my computer has been hacked, help please?

Hi,
A couple of days a go, after having my laptop for nearly two years, I have started to have major issues with it. When I log on, as soon as I get on to my desktop, without any encouragement, it starts doing its own thing such as the mouse moving around in a very jagged manner and generally resisting anything I attempt to do. It is making my computer incredably slow and its so frustrating. Even worse, I am frightened I may have picked up something and that someone is controlling my machine but the issue is I know so very little about computers, any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I have changed browsers (used to use Safari, now I use FireFox) and have backed up all my files on to a hard drive and am thinking about restoring the mac to it's factory settings but I am unsure whether this would mean I would lose all my applications which I desperately can't afford to do. It only happens occasionally, so at the present it is fine but it occurs out of the blue and is very unnerving. I have two anti virus programmes on here: ClamXav and iAntiVirus which suggest that there are no virus found on the computer. I have also been monitoring the activity monitor and although nothing has particularly drawn much attention, it can be fair to say I am not entirely sure what I am looking for.
Is there any way to double check to see as to whether my computer is infected and if so what would be my next move?
Muchly appreciated

The anti-virus software is not the problem. Yes, Shootist is correct that AV software can be almost as much of a problem as getting infected with malware, but ClamXav is one that is good. Having two isn't so good, though, so ditch iAntivirus at least. And see my Mac Malware Guide for more information to protect yourself from malware.
Similarly, the firewall is also not the problem. You almost certainly do not need a firewall. See Do I need a firewall? for more information on that.
Most likely, you are not being hacked. If I understand you correctly, it doesn't seem like the mouse has any purpose to its actions - is that correct? If so, my first thought would be that your battery has gone bad and is expanding, and in the process is pressing on the underside of the trackpad. That is a known cause of this kind of behavior. Though I must admit I've never seen a battery expand, it does happen. I'd advise getting the machine looked at by Apple ASAP.
If the movements do appear purposeful, someone could be playing a prank on you. Check System Preferences -> Sharing and make sure everything there is turned off. If Screen Sharing is on, someone may have been using that to access your machine, most likely someone who knows your MobileMe password (if you have MobileMe) or someone on the same local network that you're using.
(Note that my pages contain links to other pages that promote my services, and this should not be taken as an endorsement of my services by Apple.)

My computer has been hacked what do i do?

basically my problem is someone is remotely connected ot my computer through a virus and antivirus nor mac will pick it up i talked to apple and they did some troubleshooting but it only made the situation worse. He suggested that I change my IP address the computer and I was wondering how do I go about doing that.

Disconnect from the internet.
Look through your Mac and delete all potential or recently downloaded files and folders.
The best bet is make a back up of trusted files and folders then completely wipe the computer but make sure the files and folders are definately safe.

How do I find out if my phone has been hacked?

A friend informed me that someone we know may have hacked into my phone. This is in order to track emails text messages and conversations. How do I find out if my phone has been hacked? If it has how do I resolve the problem?

Hi ..
How to Tell if an iPhone Has Been Hacked
Set up a passcode to protect your data > iOS passcodes
Chane the password for your email account.

How do I find out if my MAC has been hacked?

How do I find out if my MAC has been hacked?

Hi ..
How to Tell if an iPhone Has Been Hacked
Set up a passcode to protect your data > iOS passcodes
Chane the password for your email account.

My computer has been wiped but I still have the songs on my ipod how can i get them back into my newly downloaded itunes?

My computer has been wiped and I've lost everything including itunes. I have the songs on my ipod how do i get them back into my newly downloaded itunes?

Please see the Knowledge Base from turingtest2 below
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3991

I have an IPhone 5, and of course I have used ITunes. My Computer has been completely destroyed, so I have to Purchase a new one. How can I transfer my music from my iPhone to my New PC?

I have an IPhone 5, and of course I have used ITunes. My Computer has been completely destroyed, so I have to Purchase a new one. How can I transfer my music from my iPhone to my New PC?

The way I do it is I hook to my windows computer, it will pop up iTunes. I click iTunes off. The phone will show as another drive on your computer. Click it open then migrate to the photos folder from the iPhone.
Then select all, cut then right click on your pictures folder on your computer or make a new folder on your desk top like I do and right click on new folder and select paste.
Photos will be gone. Just remember to turn off the iPhone sync in your photos folder on the phone or they will come back
Good Luck

How to detect if my computer has been hacked

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