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>I've noticed an increase in Virus/Worms getting onto my machine (macbook air, osx 10.8.5). Whoa whoa whoa whoa. I'd like to know more. Your claim is basically

>I've noticed an increase in Virus/Worms getting onto my machine (macbook air, osx 10.8.5). Whoa whoa whoa whoa. I'd like to know more. Your claim is basically that there is a 0-day attack on OS X machines being exploited in the wild and it requires even less than opening an email? That's a very significant claim. My best guess is maybe you're being exploited by the numerous Java flaws, but even that sounds like a stretch. >Is there anyway to harden the mail client so it's not allowing these files to even reach my system? Perhaps that's an IMAP setting on GMail I can configure/alter? Google's security engineers are 10 to 1000x the average person. If there is a useful default setting they know about, it is probably already enabled. Heck, earlier today I hit a URL dealing with Namecoin and Google freaked out that it was a known phishing website and prevented me from visiting.

evo_9 13y ago
Look I'm not claiming anything, I'm simply stating the facts that I have before me. I scan with variou virus/worm tools and I see ONLY gmail infected files. They are not emails I've ever looked at, touched, clicked on, opened - anything. They happen to be on my machine under the spam/junk folder. That's it. That's the mystery. I don't understand how they are infecting my machine. Maybe these items are being picked up by the tools (sophos, clamxav and bitdefender) as on the machine but not causing harm - I don't know. All I know is I've had peculiar behavior, behavior that in the past when I was on lets say a Windows XP work-machine usually meant I had something funky on my machine. So that's where I'm at. I've added 'Hands Off' and I'm going to closely track what is going on. Until then I'm not sure what to do about my Gmail account(s). As far as I've seen from a couple of friends that happen to work at Google (one is a VP...), yeah I think they are (mostly) still humans and prone to mistakes from time to time. Hubris comes to mind. Fun word if you are unfamiliar.
- 27182818284 13y ago
  > Google (one is a VP...)...Hubris comes to mind. Fun word if you are unfamiliar. Yeah me too, Google is a big organization! I also know core iOS engineers who used to work on super computers. My point was that those people are 10x to 100x or more in skill so if there was an "imap setting" that you ask about, it would be on by default unless it had some huge drawback. I feel like that's irrelevant, though, because if your machine is infected it is unlikely to have happened via Gmail. My best guess right now is that you're not quite sure on what "infected" means and maybe have some suspicious Word attachments sent to you that show up in the scan results, but aren't harmful. Until you offer something more to us, you are just making claims. (Yes I know you think you aren't making claims, but your statements are claims in substance even if they don't use the word "claim") Ugh, you know what, this is a less than great posting and we should just flag this whole thread.
- Terretta 13y ago
  > I scan with various virus/worm tools and I see ONLY gmail infected files. They are not emails I've ever looked at, touched, clicked on, opened - anything. They happen to be on my machine under the spam/junk folder. OH! This does not mean what you think it means. This means that Gmail is correctly classifying evil emails into your spam folder. You are, for your own reasons, downloading the SPAM folder to your computer instead of leaving it on Google's server. This brings the email text and attachments into the email app's storage folder on your HDD. Your anti-virus software is scanning local files for virus or malware signatures. The attachments on these emails have these signatures. This has nothing to do with you opening them, running them, or being infected by them. Your email client dutifully downloads the SPAM folder, stores it locally, and your AV tool is spotting the bad sequences of bytes. That's sort of like having a collection of viral agents in glass vials. You've collected them, but you're not infected. Opening the email and running the attachment, that'd be a problem. Or, if the attachment can get itself to run in the context of just viewing the mail, and you view it, that'd be a problem. So, (1) Don't download the SPAM folder, waste of time and storage; if you don't download it, Sophos etc won't see/detect the bytes. (2) Don't browse the spam folder if you don't want to be infected by things in spam emails. (3) If you do download the spam folder because, say, you have a lot of false positives you need to rescue out of it, then check for them frequently and delete the rest or set it to auto-empty. I'd go with just not downloading it.
  - evo_9 13y ago
    Gotcha, thanks that's the conclusion I came to (aka, the spam folder is being pulled but nothing from it is being 'run'). That whole thing (gmail spam folder/etc) turned out to be red-herring. The mystery was what caused the odd behavior I started having in Safari that triggered all this. Long/short I watched a, let's say 'non-standard' sports field a buddy sent me of a blacked-out red-wing game. I remember the browser firing a window fullscreen for second that vanished and thought 'oh that's not good...'. I was of course drinking watching the game and forgot about the whole incident until really thinking about what might have caused it... Anyway, thanks for the help... on a side note does anyone have an opinion on which (if any) of the various AV tools out worth running? Sophos seems pretty good but I'm not a fan of something constantly running in the background ala norton/mcaffee.

evo_9 13y ago

Look I'm not claiming anything, I'm simply stating the facts that I have before me. I scan with variou virus/worm tools and I see ONLY gmail infected files. They are not emails I've ever looked at, touched, clicked on, opened - anything. They happen to be on my machine under the spam/junk folder. That's it. That's the mystery. I don't understand how they are infecting my machine. Maybe these items are being picked up by the tools (sophos, clamxav and bitdefender) as on the machine but not causing harm - I don't know. All I know is I've had peculiar behavior, behavior that in the past when I was on lets say a Windows XP work-machine usually meant I had something funky on my machine. So that's where I'm at. I've added 'Hands Off' and I'm going to closely track what is going on. Until then I'm not sure what to do about my Gmail account(s). As far as I've seen from a couple of friends that happen to work at Google (one is a VP...), yeah I think they are (mostly) still humans and prone to mistakes from time to time. Hubris comes to mind. Fun word if you are unfamiliar.

27182818284 13y ago
> Google (one is a VP...)...Hubris comes to mind. Fun word if you are unfamiliar. Yeah me too, Google is a big organization! I also know core iOS engineers who used to work on super computers. My point was that those people are 10x to 100x or more in skill so if there was an "imap setting" that you ask about, it would be on by default unless it had some huge drawback. I feel like that's irrelevant, though, because if your machine is infected it is unlikely to have happened via Gmail. My best guess right now is that you're not quite sure on what "infected" means and maybe have some suspicious Word attachments sent to you that show up in the scan results, but aren't harmful. Until you offer something more to us, you are just making claims. (Yes I know you think you aren't making claims, but your statements are claims in substance even if they don't use the word "claim") Ugh, you know what, this is a less than great posting and we should just flag this whole thread.
Terretta 13y ago
> I scan with various virus/worm tools and I see ONLY gmail infected files. They are not emails I've ever looked at, touched, clicked on, opened - anything. They happen to be on my machine under the spam/junk folder. OH! This does not mean what you think it means. This means that Gmail is correctly classifying evil emails into your spam folder. You are, for your own reasons, downloading the SPAM folder to your computer instead of leaving it on Google's server. This brings the email text and attachments into the email app's storage folder on your HDD. Your anti-virus software is scanning local files for virus or malware signatures. The attachments on these emails have these signatures. This has nothing to do with you opening them, running them, or being infected by them. Your email client dutifully downloads the SPAM folder, stores it locally, and your AV tool is spotting the bad sequences of bytes. That's sort of like having a collection of viral agents in glass vials. You've collected them, but you're not infected. Opening the email and running the attachment, that'd be a problem. Or, if the attachment can get itself to run in the context of just viewing the mail, and you view it, that'd be a problem. So, (1) Don't download the SPAM folder, waste of time and storage; if you don't download it, Sophos etc won't see/detect the bytes. (2) Don't browse the spam folder if you don't want to be infected by things in spam emails. (3) If you do download the spam folder because, say, you have a lot of false positives you need to rescue out of it, then check for them frequently and delete the rest or set it to auto-empty. I'd go with just not downloading it.
- evo_9 13y ago
  Gotcha, thanks that's the conclusion I came to (aka, the spam folder is being pulled but nothing from it is being 'run'). That whole thing (gmail spam folder/etc) turned out to be red-herring. The mystery was what caused the odd behavior I started having in Safari that triggered all this. Long/short I watched a, let's say 'non-standard' sports field a buddy sent me of a blacked-out red-wing game. I remember the browser firing a window fullscreen for second that vanished and thought 'oh that's not good...'. I was of course drinking watching the game and forgot about the whole incident until really thinking about what might have caused it... Anyway, thanks for the help... on a side note does anyone have an opinion on which (if any) of the various AV tools out worth running? Sophos seems pretty good but I'm not a fan of something constantly running in the background ala norton/mcaffee.