Solved older imac - need help w locked browser and security

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paperbeagle

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Thread author
Oct 2, 2018
1
This is complicated. The gist is that I have a javascript hijacker on an older mac that won't run apps that deal with such things. Choose where to start:

Background situation:
I have an older imac because I do design work and I paid $1400 for the disk version of adobe creative suite - which doesn't run on anything higher than yosemite 10.10
So, I got this current imac recently bc mine died after 11yrs of hard use. I am slowly upgrading to yosemite but apple has removed both mavericks 10.9 and yosemite 10.10 from their servers. No way to get it without a third party. I am working on that. But atm I am stuck with 10.8.5 - which won't run ANY virus checker... nothing I have found. Malwarebytes won't even run. So I am really vulnerable. I can't run dropbpx or any cloud services and a lot of stuff just doesn't wok. I am not on this OSX level by choice.

The Urgent Problem:
I am using chrome bc it seems to cope better than safari with the limitations. In browsing around I got that stupid %$#@& javascript thing that locks your browser up so you can't do anything. It isn't the FBI one, it just has a window that says the last website I visited infected my computer and to click ok to repair - which of course, I do not do. (see screenshot) I got out of it but it comes back.

Temporary Fix:
I got out of it by choosing view full history in the toolbar. Morons didn't think to lock that one. Getting into history allows a backdoor into settings. I was able to disabled javascript and clear all history, cookies, cache and change any settings that could be contributing. I closed Chrome and when I re-opened I didn't restore the original offending tabs. Perfect, right?

The cat came back:
I started setting things back to usable form and as soon as I tried to load youtube after I turned javascript back on, it hijacked my browser. It took me to a website that had all these boo-scary looking warnings about how my "WINDOWS PC" was in peril. It again gave the same popup and locked everything up. Not the brightest folks doing this. I am running an iMac for one thing. I redid the same steps as before and closed it all down. But obviously, just turning off javascript and then turning it back on doesn't remove this POS. I had to register here using safari, so it is limited to the browser I was using, chrome.

No Options for Virus or Malware checkers:
I can't run malwarebytes. They don't offer legacy versions and neither do any other of the major virus/malware scanners. If anyone knows how I can get something to run on 10.8.5 until I can obtain a higher OS, that would be freaking awesome. I typically run both mwb and avg. I just can't atm.

The Question:
So please. How can I get this rotten, cowardly javascript hijacker off my iMac?
 

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Ink

Administrator
Verified
Jan 8, 2011
22,490
You can try Objective-See
Runs on Mac OS X 10.8+

Reset Chrome browser
Reset Chrome settings to default - Google Chrome Help

I'm not sure how people get infected with these things in the first place, but I see you have Vuze installed. Have you recently download/install any programs from the Internet or Torrent. Do you have an out-dated (unpatched) software on your computer?


Reminder to self - Mac OS X 10.8.5 is Mountain Lion

Mod Notes:
Thread moved to appropriate Malware Removal Assistance For Mac sub-forum.
 
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