Apple geniuses couldn't help me, you guys are my last resort!

Problem: My actions (mainly just web browsing) online seem to be causing high amounts of internet data usage, on everything I use!

Story: Internet provider starts charging me overages for going over my monthly data limit. I find that out of 4 other people using our WiFi network my MacBook and I are the root cause. ( up to 1gb of data every hour w/o downloading a single thing is what I'm producing)

I decide to erase my hard drive and start fresh hoping the problem does not occur. But it continues so I take it Apple and using their Wifi network the problem does not seem to occur.

Stop using my MacBook altogether and begin to use brothers iPad (for web browsing, twitter, Hotmail, gmail)
Data usage spikes up again this time from the iPad.

I'm currently using a desktop PC with Microsoft and today it started to spike. I'm not sure what's haunting my online presence but everything I touch on my network seems to start spiking, mainly "packets received" when I observed the activity monitor on my Mac.

My suspicions: Trojan Horse or Virus of some sort from a pirated torrent of Office I downloaded to my Mac
Trojan or Virus from BackTrack5 - downloaded to my Mac and Avast Scan gave me a warning on this file, as well as another file "boot.root loader" that was in my "Resources" folder.
Any one of my online accounts is compromised in some way: twitter email accounts, maybe even my apple ID ( passwords were all changed after my visit to the Apple store)
FlashBack Trojan from Adobe, I recently downloaded Adobe Acrobat Pro Trial recently on my Mac before this started to happen and Apple has dedicated a section to Adobe on their security page https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-2472


I'm really stumped here guys... are viruses able to latch onto online accounts of mine and follow me wherever I go?

Tomorrow I plan on downloading the anti-Trojan detection software apple recommends and seeing if it detects anything. My next step is to start deleting accounts one by one starting with my Hotmail since it has the most traffic and potential of a virus coming through.

I know I just wrote novel so any advice or tips are greatly appreciated.

OK.... it seems that by your own admission the issue is people using your wifi?

It is not common AFAIK for malware to download a huge amount of data - if anything they are more likely to transmit data. Some big culprits in bulk downloads are iTunes and other media content applications. Can you provide more information about the data usage; what is your ISP limit? How much are you downloading?

It may be time to change the security on your wifi also rather than obliterate your hard drive.

Im intrigued; lets sort this out for you.

Oh, and to answer your question about latching to online accounts. Not that I am aware of; and if there are it is up to the hosts to fix the issue (Google would fix such problems with gmail etc).

The only option available to you is to change your password to your online accounts using a 3rd party computer; one that you know is trustworthy.

Any p2p software running in the background?

CybertecOne

After this started to occur we changed our wpa key and made it so that only certain MAC Addresses could access the Wifi Network.

I've only observed the high data usage live on my MacBook's activity monitor (not sure how to do this on Windows), which would show "packets received" going up 100MB every 10 - 15 minutes of course bringing me to about a gig a data after about an hour. Our limit I believe is 15GB a month.

iTunes would normally be the only other app I have running next to my browser. A far as my downloading I don't download things often other than music occasionally. (if that's what your referring to)



Chaosclown No sir, every few months I'll download a torrent maybe but that's it.

Netstat is a possible.
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d....mspx?mfr=true

Make darn sure the torrent is disabled.

And there are a few nasties that do what you are seeing.
Suggest
malwarebytes free is fine
http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Eseet online
http://www.eset.com/us/online-scanner/
for starters.

Shay

Thanks for the links, going to try them all out today.

So how did things turn out??

Any chance iCloud is causing the traffic spike as soon as you use any of your i devices ?

Do you know what worked for you?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ac09

My suspicions: Trojan Horse or Virus of some sort from a pirated torrent of Office I downloaded to my Mac
Trojan or Virus from BackTrack5 - downloaded to my Mac and Avast Scan gave me a warning on this file, as well as another file "boot.root loader" that was in my "Resources" folder.
Any one of my online accounts is compromised in some way: twitter email accounts, maybe even my apple ID ( passwords were all changed after my visit to the Apple store)
FlashBack Trojan from Adobe, I recently downloaded Adobe Acrobat Pro Trial recently on my Mac before this started to happen and Apple has dedicated a section to Adobe on their security page https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-2472

---

user seems to know just what he did wrong at least, first rule of torrents, don't trust the content : second rule of torrent, don't trust the content. can see this is a little old now, and OP hasn't bothered or been able to get back, would imagine he has figured out that deleting suspect torrent, and running full scale security sweep on system in safe mode will have helped, probably system restore too. Also noticed he said WPA key has been changed, so it is a fairly safe bet he is on his way to cleaning it up, but again, the question NOW is how do we engage with a member to make then WANT to come back and let us know it is all now OK, because, I, for one, am now getting to the point that help is no longer so easily given, as I really DO like the happy endings, and with no further input we will never truly know

Hi Foxy,

We have both been on this forum for more years than we care to remember?

You very rarely get feedback I am afraid, I would say about 10% other than from contributing members.

Best I had was many years ago............... the guy was in Cape Town and had a USB glitch............... he replied:

"Well smear me with honey, and throw me to the lesbians; that worked!"

:)

Trial software normally has ads on it, it will take a little bit of your bandwidth sending ads to every viewers, now as you mention that you are using pirated stuff it could also be that one, to those people who make free stuff usually took advantage of what they offer and you never know. There are lots of bandwidth monitor software that will help you monitor your broadband usage, one of those is Surplus Meter. Hope it helps. Cheers!

and then again, for us veterans at least, posts like the above really make me want to a) bang my head against a brick wall repeatedly or b) tear the information to shreds reducing it to nothing but twaddle as it really provides no useful details... once upon a time I remember wanting to help such a person understand the technology better.

lol

... just quickly; bandwidth monitor will give you no advantage or usable info unless it is installed between the gateways and networked computers (IE, proxy or gateway server). ANYway...

I have always made a point to come back to a forum and reply and actually conclude a thread.

Hi there CT1,

I will lay 100:1 on that the poster is a bot of somesort, but that is not against the rules as far as I am aware, so I can't take action until there is some sort of serious infringement.

@ Aaron:

Brace yourself old chap, but not just yet, as it will be a long swim and I will have to renew my passport first :p:drink: