Mac Attack Chapter 1- Where It Began

As posted on my FB page:

I used to be pretty anti Apple primarily because everyone else seemed to think they were God's gift to technology. Whichever direction the masses are going i tend to go in the opposite direction. And then i started working at a company where everyone used Macs so i adapted. After a few years of using a Macbook Air exclusively for work i grew quite fond of it. I wasn't interested in purchasing any other Apple products, but i did really like my Macbook. I say "did" because i may never be able to use it again. 

Yesterday afternoon, i attempted to log in to my Macbook, but the first thing i noticed was a screen requesting i enter a 4-digit pin to access my laptop. As this is something i've NEVER seen before on any computer i ever used, I was immediately suspicious. I was given the option to restart my Mac which i did, but returned me to the same log in screen requesting a pin. Fearing the worst, I contacted a good friend who used to work for Apple support and explained to him my situation. I took a picture of my screen and texted it to him. He was able to verify that in fact i had been hacked and was being subjected to ransomware! 

Needless to say i was extremely upset by this and felt as though i had been violated. He suggested i change my icloud log in info (which i did) as that was the likely culprit in how my Mac was hacked. I, like probably most people was under the impression that for the most part Macs can't be hacked. I was dead wrong! Anyhow, my friend suggested i contact Apple support, explain to them the situation and they should be able to help me log back into my Mac. So i did and that's where things really started to go off the rails. Since this post is getting crazy long, I'm gonna break this up into 2 posts. Stay tuned for part 2 of this ongoing saga...