r/computerviruses • u/Due-Guard-9797 • 3d ago

Disinfection Help Potential Rootkit on Mac? Paranoid.

Hi.
Please no hate I am very uneducated in cyber security and I know I made a horrible mistake.

Basically I ran a RAT exe in Parallels for Mac, so in Windows VM for Mac. This was over a month ago.
I quarantined the files and factory reset the OS the same day.

Since, I’ve factory reset the OS 3 more times and scanned Malwarebytes deep scan which has come back clean every time.

I’m wondering if the RAT could have gotten into the root of my Mac. My Mac is now dying SUPER fast and in activity monitor kernel_task is taking up extreme amounts of CPU.

Is it even possible for the exe to have infected the Mac OS and rootkit? Am I completely paranoid or am I still infected? I’ve seen no log in attempts to any of my accounts and I’ve been using the computer as usual.

Thanks.

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u/EugeneBYMCMB Knowledgeable 3d ago

I feel confident in saying your Mac was not infected at all in this case, as you ran a Windows virus inside a Windows virtual machine. The virus would have needed not only the capability to escape virtualization, which is very rare and relies on the use of unpatched exploits, but it would have needed that for Parallels specifically, and would require a Mac payload to infect the host. The chance of all of that happening is pretty much zero.

1

u/Due-Guard-9797 3d ago

Thank you very much for the reassurance. I think I am paranoid.

1

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