Chosen Solution
I downloaded the Islands Void Script, Islands Alternate Link, and Vega X Download from the description of this YouTube video- https://youtu.be/RlhZLdS06Co and now I appear to have a virus. Norton is taking ages and finding nothing, Malware Bytes and Avast are scanning in 10 seconds or less and finding nothing. Before I installed these items I scanned them with Norton, so when they said no threats found I went ahead and downloaded them. I don’t know what to do because I’m not fully aware of how scripts work. I deleted these items so they’re no longer on my computer, however the damage is obviously already done. Safari will not close, (even through force quit - it disappears for a millisecond but appears again in the force quit screen) and I keep getting a pop up for “mac keeper”. I also can’t google anything without being redirected through several links before landing at yahoo. I’ve cleared the cache, the history, and deleted the only extension I had (Honey), and removed all items under “manage website data” on the privacy tab through safari preferences. I also saw the list of websites that downloads are set to “allow” and I denied many that I no longer need or wasn’t sure of. One of those was the file name I saw tonight called artesevening.xyz. I changed it from allow to deny, and then I removed it from the list along with the others I was unsure of. I can say that after downloading, when I clicked to install these items, I was prompted by security to “open anyway” which I did so because Norton had found them not to be threatening. Upon doing so, I found that Terminal was open, but nothing else had been. I found it to be fishy so I deleted them and moved on. Minutes later I found several tabs open in safari that I did not open. I closed them and tried to google something and that’s when I first noticed the redirecting. I’m much more Windows savvy than I am with Mac but I really want to get this taken care of. Any suggestions?
Hi @kimberlyrenee, This is what’s known as a browser hijacker, and can be a bit tricky to get rid of without a software that recognizes it and removes it. I have done a bit of Googling now, but I can’t seen to find any English sites that describes that process for this particular one, or software that removes it. The intent of this one is made to hijack your browser and to display ads to you and redirect you to pages with ads the coders make money on. Luckily it (at least not yet) doesn’t steal information, that I can find info about, but it could be updated in the future unless removed. What sort of files do you have on your Mac that you’d like to keep?Documents, pictures, etc.? I haven’t really encountered a hijacker in quite a few years, but they’re out there!Here is a link to an article on Trend Micro (very reputable security company), detailing a bit of information.
