How to completely secure a Mac?

[sambarnes]

My girlfriend, who lives a few hours away, thinks someone may be hacking into her Mac Mini. She lent her MacBook Pro to a guy she knows very well in the IT department to fix a few things and he had it overnight. That was a few months ago. She says that since then some weird things are happening when she's using her Mac Mini, but I won't get into them because I think she's just paranoid and what she says just doesn't make sense. Anywho...

I'm a PC guy and not very good with networking, though I do understand most of it. What I would like to know is if you had a Mac Mini that had a brand new SSD installed in it (my idea) with a few install of OS X, how would you make 1000% sure that no one could access that computer besides her? She does have a WRT54G wireless router with WPA2 protection on it. I don't care what it costs if I have to spend money to buy the most secure router with the greatest firewall in existence. Ok, I'd like to keep that under $150. Anything to calm her down and get her some peace of mind. And so she'll quit bugging me! Also, any software that will keep her 1000% safe?

 

[ViRGE]

If Evil IT Dude knows his stuff, then it's likely he's installed something that's going to be nearly untracable. Rootkits run at such a low level that they can hide from virtually everything.

That said, the single easiest thing to do is to grab LittleSnitch. It's both an inbound and an outbound firewall, so it will let you see what applications are trying to connect to the Internet. If Evil IT Dude did do something (and it doesn't know how to subvert LittleSnitch) then it would show up among the programs requesting Internet access. However do keep in mind that LittleSnitch will tell you about everything, which includes a myriad of system services. So the data it presents you can be overwhelming at first.

Finally, it goes without saying that you can only do so much about malware after the fact. If you're really concerned about the Mac, wipe it and start over.

 

[mazeroth]

A new SSD with a fresh install of OS X should take care of it.

 

[Nothinman]

My girlfriend, who lives a few hours away, thinks someone may be hacking into her Mac Mini. She lent her MacBook Pro to a guy she knows very well in the IT department to fix a few things and he had it overnight. That was a few months ago. She says that since then some weird things are happening when she's using her Mac Mini, but I won't get into them because I think she's just paranoid and what she says just doesn't make sense. Anywho...

I'm a PC guy and not very good with networking, though I do understand most of it. What I would like to know is if you had a Mac Mini that had a brand new SSD installed in it (my idea) with a few install of OS X, how would you make 1000% sure that no one could access that computer besides her? She does have a WRT54G wireless router with WPA2 protection on it. I don't care what it costs if I have to spend money to buy the most secure router with the greatest firewall in existence. Ok, I'd like to keep that under $150. Anything to calm her down and get her some peace of mind. And so she'll quit bugging me! Also, any software that will keep her 1000% safe?

The only way to keep her 1000% safe is to turn it off and bury it. If she doesn't trust the IT guy she shouldn't have loaned him her PC to fix. If she knows him well enough to trust him then it's most likely just a coincidence and some other technical issue popped up or there's nothing wrong at all and she's just overreacting.

Dumping money into worthless software won't help anything, education and common sense are all that are really effective.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Well, unless IT dude somehow knows his stuffs really well, as in... he secretly works for NSA, I don't think there is any way in hell he can access her Mac Mini from... having access to her MacBook Pro. That's like science-fiction.

It's possible, but his hacking skills would have to be way above your average "IT guy" in order to pull it off.

For one thing, it would require him to plant an automated process in her MacBook Pro that has administrator privileges and knows to scan for network availablity. On top of that, it would have to specifically know how to identify her Mac Mini over her network after scanning and eliminating random things like her phone, her Apple TV or what-nots. Last but not least, it'd have to be able to transmit that information back to him... so that he can proceed to hack into her network, and then exploit her Mac Mini. If her router is any decent, it would already have the necessary security protocols in place to make sure any incoming transmission wouldn't be able to target any particular device on the network.

...it doesn't sound like a lot, but that's actually a lot of hoops to go through just to "hack" one computer. It's not as simple as installing something in the MacBook Pro.

And the weird thing is... if he actually had the skills to pull off something like that, why is he merely an "IT guy"?

 

[gpse]

Fresh Install of OSX making sure to delete the old Install.

 

[sourceninja]

If you are really worried, do a fresh install and do not use the same passwords. There really isn't all that much to securing a computer.

Strong password + not giving bad guys local access to the device + a good firewall is all you need in 99% of cases.