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December 12, 2017 7:14 AM   Subscribe

Two of my computers have exhibited the same problem of mouse clicks not registering. Should I panic?

A couple of weeks ago, I started getting "Your Mac is Infected" popups in Safari. I believed they were caused by malware as the popups appeared after I clicked on links on sites that I trusted. I've since reset Safari and upgraded to the latest OS. I haven't seen them since.

But this wasn't the only odd behaviour that I noticed. A few days before I updated the OS, I noticed that javascript buttons were often not responding to my clicks. I thought that it might have been a bug in my browser but then I noticed that clicks weren't responded to when I clicked near the bottom right of the screen -- no matter what app I was using. (I considered that it might be my trackpad failing but it seemed otherwise okay.) This is what prompted me to upgrade to High Sierra. My Mac has since been free of the problem.

However, just this morning, I noticed something similar on my PC (Windows 10). Chrome's URL bar became unresponsive and I'm sure I had to click several times on a JS button. On relaunching the browser, the bar would respond for a few pages then stop working again. The problem hasn't returned after a restart but I'm now concerned that my security has been compromised.

I'm afraid that some piece of malware is intercepting my clicks and logging them. If my clicks are being recorded, then it's quite likely my keypresses are being recorded too.

Windows Defender says I'm okay. I'm not too eager to download any further anti-virus programs for my PC -- I don't trust them -- and there's nothing I know for the Mac that I trust.

Does it sound likely that there's a keylogger installed on my machine? What steps can I take to make sure there really isn't a key logger on either machine? I have nettop running but I'm not sure what I should be looking for. I'm not really keen on fresh installs as I depend on both machines for work -- Windows 10 is a pain to upgrade let alone install -- and there's rarely a time when I don't have a job in progress.

By the way, my credit card number is:
posted by popcassady to Computers & Internet (3 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Download and install MalwareBytes and see if it finds anything (there's a version for Mac and Windows, and I've trusted it for 10+ years now). Before running the first scan, go into Settings > Protection > and turn Scan for Rootkits on (Windows only, don't have a Mac to see if it has this option available there at the moment). This will help check and see if there's anything unwanted running.

It just sounds like Chrome was acting up and keeping a bunch of RAM in use, not too terribly unexpected with how it's been running lately. A restart was the right idea.
posted by deezil at 7:43 AM on December 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Response by poster: Thanks. I ran MalwareBytes on both machines. The PC was clean but the Mac was infected with Spigot. I guess that explains why my homepage switched to Yahoo not long ago.
posted by popcassady at 8:41 AM on December 12, 2017


It should be good to go then. If it acts up, it may be that the Temporary Internet files inside Chrome need a hosing out. Menu > Settings > type "Cache" in the search bar > Clear Browsing Data > make sure the only checkmark is in Cached Images and Files, and that the time selector at the top says "the beginning of time". Hit the big blue button, and off you go.
posted by deezil at 1:35 PM on December 12, 2017


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