Malware found in .MobileBackups/ folder on MacBook Pro

Question

Hi, I ran a virus scan and Malware found in .MobileBackups/ folder as well as Time Machine Backups.  I partitioned the backup drive and deleted all the previous backups, then re-ran the scan.  Now the same virus (Trojan.Script.171700) is showing in the Mobile Backups folder.
I was able to reveal the hidden files through a script change in terminal.  But after I tried to open the hidden MobileBackups folder, got an error saying I did not have permission to open.
So how do I delete these infected files?

Answer 1

mac-newbie wrote:
Do you know what the path is to these mobilbackups so that I can avoid backing them up and having the malware spread to my external drive and my online backup?
Time Machine doesn't back up the .MobileBackups folder. That is simply another set of backups maintained by Time Machine. See:
What are Local Snapshots?
Further, you are still worrying about these things too much. These are Windows malware, not Mac malware, and even if they were Mac malware, they couldn't affect your Mac unless you opened them. If you insist on removing every piece of malware attached to every spam e-mail from your backups, that will become a tedious daily task that cannot be automated by anti-virus software without corrupting your mailboxes and your backups.
Ignore them. They are not a threat. Even if you have to restore your system from backups, are you then going to go into your restored junk mail folder and start opening things? No.
As to BitDefender, that's not much good on the Mac. When I tested it last year against over 180 malware samples, it only caught about 76% of them. That's a pretty poor detection rate when there really hasn't ever been very much Mac malware.