How To Know When Your Mac Is Hacked

Apr 10, 2019 To Read: How To Know if Your Twitter is Hacked and How To Fix it Ways Hackers Might Use To Hack WhatsApp 1. Using WhatsApp Web. I hope you know about this activity where you can use WhatsApp web and WhatsApp from your smartphone, both at the same time. However, someone else can use this activity to get into all your WhatsApp conversations.

“I’ve been hacked” is a common thing to hearthese days. Whether it’s someone mistakenly referring to a random malwareinfection or a person trying to walk back a regrettable social media post, it’sa term that gets thrown around a lot.

Getting hacked is, however, a real danger for modern day users of devices like computers, smartphones and tablets. There exists an entire underground of so called “black hat” hackers that profit from exploiting vulnerabilities in systems and human psychology. Identity theft and direct monetary theft are two common drivers of these criminal hackers.

The problem is that knowing you’ve been hackedcan be hard. It’s not like there’s a big flashing red light to let you know.Which is why you should be aware of common signs that something isn’t right inyour digital world. Thus, here are the signs that you have been the unfortunatevictim of a hack.

A Hacker Tells You

We’re starting with the most obvious sign thatyou’ve been hacked, which is simply being contacted by someone purporting to bethe hacker and having them say so.

This could be via direct message, by email orthrough malware such as ransomware. Either way, the hacker will usually tellyou that they’ve compromised you and then provide some form of evidence. Thiswill then be followed by some sort of demand, often money in the form of acryptocurrency payment.

What should you do? The first thing you should know is that just because someone says they’ve managed to hack you, doesn’t mean that’s the case. One recent trick is to contact a person via email and then show them that they have their password for a specific account.

What’s actually happening here is that the scammer has pulled an old password and hopes to scare you into giving them money or something of real use. If they actually had access to your account they’d demonstrate it in a concrete way (like encrypting your entire computer).

So, log into the account in question, changethe password and activate two-factor authentication if possible. Also, if anyother accounts are using the password you’ve been threatened with, change themimmediately. Then forget all about it. Also, never ever give money to thesepeople, it will do nothing to help you and only embolden them.

If the threat is real, then contact theservice provider and let them know your account has been hijacked. If you’vebeen a victim of ransomware, which encrypts your data and asks for money, cutyour losses. Wipe the machine and restore data from backups. You should alsokeep your most critical info in something like Dropbox, which lets you rollback any changes for a long window period.

You Can’t Log In

One of the first signs that you’ve been hacked is when your credentials for an account refuse to work. You’ve double-checked and still can’t log in. Weird, right? Well this is a pretty obvious sign that someone else has the keys to your kingdom and that can be a very serious situation.

Whatshould you do? The right course of action here dependson a few things. You should immediately initiate a password reset and changeyour password if you can. Then, if the service offers it, activate two-factorauthentication. This means having to type in an additional one-time code fromyour phone or via email, but is a very effective way to prevent hacking.

If your primary email account has been hackedand you have not set up any backup recovery options prior to it happening, youneed to get in touch with the service provider immediately so that they cansuspend the account and then verify your identity.

Activity That Wasn’t You

Are your friends messaging you because of something you posted on Twitter? Did your online persona suddenly send some very NSFW content to your boss?

That’s a pretty clear-cut sign that your account has been taken over. You can follow exactly the same advice as in the point above, but also be sure to post a notice on your social media accounts apologizing for the content and disclaiming yourself.

Your Browser is Being Rebellious

Did you notice something strange when openingup your web browser? Your usual home page is nowhere to be seen. Instead somestrange new search engine sits there, waiting for you like an unwanted frog inthe bath. You try to type in a search term in the address bar, but it all justredirects you to that weird new site. When you try to visit your usualwebsites, the address and site don’t look quite the way they should. What’sgoing on?

This is a common technique hackers achievethrough malware, called browser hijacking.Your browser has been compromised and you can’t trust it anymore. Often, when abrowser is hijacked, you are redirected to fake versions of websites that arecontrolled by the hacker who created the malware. They can then capture yourdetails and gain access to other sites such as online banking services usingyour name.

Sometimes the goal is to simply turn yourmachine into an advertising money mill. Ads will pop up and be clicked onautomatically. Gaming the system and making money for those advertisers.Whatever the reason, this is a pretty bad situation to be in!

What Should You Do? First, you should uninstall any software added to the system since the problems started. You should also look for any applications you don’t remember installing and remove them.

This is usually not enough to get rid of the problem, so after finishing the normal uninstall process, you then need to use a malware removal tool such as Malwarebytes to clean out the infestation.

Your Device is Acting Strangely

The signs above are pretty overt, but often a compromise of your device is a little more subtle. If your computer is constantly slow and working at full capacity, that could be a sign things aren’t right. Does the battery on your phone run out much more quickly? Does the mouse pointer move by itself or applications open and close without you doing anything? Are some things, such as your antivirus, suddenly disabled?

These and other similar signs point to outsideinterference, with a hacker gaining control of your system somehow. Scary,right?

What Should You Do? First of all, disconnect that device from the internet! If someone is actively sending it commands, cutting off that access is the first step. Secondly, if you can, run anti-malware and antivirus software.

However, the best option is probably to do a factory reset or complete wipe and reinstall of that system. You may even want to have the device cleaned by a specialist, to make sure that nothing remains on it that could open a window for the hacker again.

Your Webcam Lights Up When Not inUse

Have you ever seen photos of people in frontof a computer, with a little piece of tape stuck over their webcam? That’sbecause webcam hacking is surprisingly common and the last thing you want is tobe spied on! If you notice your webcam activity light coming on when you aren’tusing it, be very suspicious!

What Should You Do? Again, we want to run malware and antivirus software. You’ll also want to see if the make and model of your webcam has received a driver or firmware update, which may contain a patch for any security flaws hackers have found.

If you have a webcam that can be switched off or disconnected, you should only have it turned on when using it. If you have a built-in camera, well that sticky tape strategy is not a bad one.

Checking if You’re The Victim ofa Data Breach

When big (or small) companies who keep you data get hacked, it could be years before that information is used against you. Often the companies don’t even know that its happened until the stolen data is put up for sale. Luckily you can head over to Have I Been Pwned, which maintains a searchable database of all known data breaches.

By simply putting in your email address, you can see if you have been compromised. If you have been a victim, go ahead and change all your passwords. In fact, you may want to make use of a password manager that auto-generates unique strong passwords for you.

How To Check If Your Mac Is Hacked

Hack This!

While there are plenty of shady people out onthe net who want to target regular people for personal gain, you don’t have totake it lying down. If you pay attention and practice a good security approach,you can often contain the situation before any serious damage is done!

Back up, wipe, reinstall, migrate in only docs, change all passwords on mail and Wi-Fi and all connected devices.

Don’t discuss trading or financials outside strictly necessary conversations, and don’t expect add-on security software or hardware products to actually do what it claims, and do expect at least some of those products to potentially open up new avenues for exploitation.

Don’t run a guest network. Or if you do need a guest network, isolate it. WPA2 with a long pre-and complex shared key,

Use a password manager.

Safari on recent releases can show shared passwords, with a warning triangle in its password store. (Safari uses Keychain for storage, but the caution marker is something that only Safari shows and nor Keychain.) Remove most or all duplicates, when you’re changing passwords everywhere.

Backups, wipe, reinstall from known-good, change all credentials, enable multi-factor authentication where that’s available.

Backups are a key part of breach recovery.

Notify your financial institutions. Also notify your local police.