I opened a strange file in the Text Edit program on my Mac recently. Obviously the result in Text Edit were garbled nonsense, considering it wasn’t a text file.
What are the chances that I could’ve received malware from doing this? Is there a way to check if it somehow installed any files or ran any scripts?
Anything is possible,… but the odds of that would make it so close to 0 as to be ridiculously unlikely.
Whatever malicious payload was in the file,. would have had to been designed and crafted specifically to target YOUR system (whatever unique combination of vulnerabilities your system has)
Besides the fact that nobody is really writing TXT files to mass-target random Users. It’s a really inefficient way to do that (because you’re banking on some random User even opening the file).
It’s like asking… “If I see a random cardboard box on the side of the road,. what are the odds it has the exact correct Spark Plugs that would work in my engine ?”… pretty close to 0.