Malware help - Macbook

What makes you think you have Malware? It’s somewhat unlikely. What actually happened when you clicked the link?

even if you have, no it won’t spread to other iCloud devices.

if you are up-to-date, you have malware protection built-in. I certainly wouldn’t be googling for & downloading random malware/anti-virus apps, they’re more likely to be malware themselves lol.

I had an email from a client with a QR code that I scanned.

The client is someone who I work with a lot. The mail came directly from that account and I was then told that malware was probably installed on my computer.

Told by who?

how did you scan a qr code from your Mac?

told by the person who was hacked. a director of an international company. I scanned it with my phone and sent the QR code website to the computer. I know it´s silly but it asked for a quote and I often provide services for that company. 

What malware scanning destroying thing should I use to check?

Very very unlikely your Mac would let you install anything bad (unless you explicitly allowed that? You still haven’t actually said what happened/what you did). Probably just a phishing style attack where they try to get info, CC numbers etc, or if malware then targeting out of date and/or Windows machines.
Also unlikely Director knows what he’s talking about  most don’t lol. Is he a Mac expert 🤔
I wouldn’t worry about it. Update your Mac if not already up to date.

macOS has an inbuilt malware thing called Xprotect. I’ve never had to use it but I’d trust it way more than any 3rd party junk floating around on the internet

Give me £500 by PayPal gift or Argos vouchers, all your login details and I’ll make sure it’s all safe.

You could try scanning the link you got from the QR code on  https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/url to see if it reports any malware.

I know nothing about Macs but my concern here would be outgoing details rather than incoming malware. Ie, did you provide username/password/etc credentials anywhere? They need changing as a priority if so.

The person I know who knows most about computers always recommends Malwarebytes:  https://www.malwarebytes.com/

I believe they do a free seven day trial, which should suffice for your purpose.

We've used Malwarebytes for years. It's pretty good.

Just use it to run a scan. It'll quarantine anything suspicious.

How did this Director notify you? If it was email I’d be extremely suspicious and dismiss any advice given by him/her. Hopefully you weren’t advised to download something to rectify the problem etc etc…

As above if you have typed any login/personal details anywhere as a direct result of this assume those details are now compromised.

I'd say in these days of AI-generated stuff, it is becoming really really hard to distinguish authentic from malicious - no longer the obvious grammatical errors in phishing emails of the past for example. If you're worried, the Avast antivirus software is pretty good (and is free, from memory).

no longer the obvious grammatical errors in phishing emails of the past for example.

Those errors are there on purpose as the kind of people who can spot them are more likely to smell a rat later in the scam and waste the scammer’s time, so they are weeded out early on.

These are very clever criminals don’t forget….

This was an exceptionally good one from a director of a Cruise company, Grammatically perfect, from their email, with the correct information in the signature (telephone number, Address including office number). The title was `Quotation needed'. 

It does seem they had access to the actual email server.

Thanks everyone

If you click into the email header you will see if it's the actual email address of if they have just spoofed it. <br /><br />

if their servers have been compromised I wouldn't be opening any emails from that organisation at all.