I have a friend with a g4 powerbook. I just got an email from him on his primary GMAIL account that was blatant spam. I called him and he checked his outbox only to see that he had sent the spam to every single person in his contact list. He, of course, had no clue this had happened.

He asked me to put this here in case anyone here has a clue how to proceed. He seems to think just his email has somehow gotten hacked into, but my intuition tells me he must have loaded some sort of virus (even on a MAC) that caused this.

Should he just change his password? Should he scan his computer (and if so, are there any free recommended scans for a MAC)?

Thanks for any info on how best to go forward.

don't let me down CTH!! I was literally boasting to my mate that "on this poker forum I go to there is a computer help section where people seem to be able to answer most anything"...now he's calling me wondering if I was fos....................

Someone has access to his gmail account. How they obtained his access credentials is another question. He could very well have a keylogger on his computer which transmitted this information to a malicious party.

So to answer your question:

His gmail has been compromised/hacked. His computer may or may not also be infected, as a precaution I would have him format/reinstall as a virus check is not always enough.

I did not see that your buddy had a mac, a keylogger is less likely on a mac but still a minute possibility. Sounds like just his gmail has been somehow compromised.

tyvm....so in that case would a simple password change do the trick? he isn't a poker player, so it isn't like he has big money transactions online, but it is still not good to proceed with an issue still not totally resolved...

Sorry about not having better turn around on Christmas...

Any accounts that use that gmail account need to have their passwords changed, preferably from a new email account.

make password changes as the first step. It's more likely that its gmail than mac that's infected.

and yes sorry for not replying faster on christmas...

Yeah make sure to change the password, and just as an extra precaution I would also tell him to change his secret question answer on the gmail account.

yeah, I can't see the mac being infected, most likely someone has his account. You should remind him to change *all* his passwords, as it's likely he's used the same one in multiple places.

AFAIK gmail isn't really capable of executing any sort of scripts that would allow his account to get infected and start mailing like that. It's possible he has a bad forwarding rule, but even that's pretty iffy. I'm not aware of a way that it could get in his rules without his knowledge (or him doing it).

He could have easily logged onto a public computer that had such a logger installed that was collecting email addresses.

hth

thanks a bunch...didnt let me down

wanted to bump to ask another mac related question. If he clicks on a link that he later finds out to be a trojan, should he be worried or is a mac o problem? if there is even the slightest chance to be worried, is there any free virus scans ppl recommend out there for macs?

additionally with access to your email account they can do "password recovery" at any number of other places and delete the recovery emails. So he should check/change all of those too.

Finally, have him go into gmail settings to the Forwarding tab and make sure his email is not set to be automatically forwarded. This may be possible with filters too, but I don't remember.

not to be overly annoying, but the previous post didn't notice the dates and the new question. Any thoughts on the above?

if he finds out its a trojan he should already know what trojan it is. Some quick googling should reveal if it is a windows or OSX related exploit. I think there is almost 0 worry of it affecting a mac unless it is a mac related website. I think he is quite safe.

The problem is a problem with his gmail account and not his Mac.

http://mashable.com/2010/03/24/gmail-warnings/