Concerned I may have malware

[sebalvarez]

I have been seeing some popup messages in macOS that are becoming more common and thus starting to concern me. At first there were some of these:

This wasn't prompted after anything I did in particular, it just appeared, about four times in the last week.

Then I started getting these:

And just now, after booting up the machine after being off all night:

The (4) and the (5) really puzzle me.

The Mac is connected to a TP Link BE9300 router, which is connected to a Motorola MG 7550 cable modem. The latter is setup to only serve as a modem and ethernet router, but it only has one cable going to the TP Link router, the other three jacks are empty.

There's a switch connected to the TP Link router, but the Mac is connected straight to the TP Link, and so is my PC.

I went into the System Profiler, and saw something strange:

The ethernet adapters that I highlighted are fake. As you all know, a Mac Studio has one Ethernet port, that's it. I guess it takes the iPhone as an ethernet port, even if it's not connected, them that bridge and Wi-Fi. The two USB ones are legit, since they are ethernet ports in each of my monitors, which also act as hubs. But there's no ethernet cable connected to them. But those I highlighted, they shouldn't be there, and in this day and age, nobody can be considered too paranoid for thinking there might be spyware in their computer.

Does anyone know why this is happening?

 

[bogdanw]

Reset network settings. See "Trash Network Settings & Start Fresh"
https://osxdaily.com/2024/10/08/fix-macos-sequoia-network-wifi-issues/
They are the same in Sonoma.

 

[sebalvarez]

Reset network settings. See "Trash Network Settings & Start Fresh"
https://osxdaily.com/2024/10/08/fix-macos-sequoia-network-wifi-issues/
They are the same in Sonoma.

Thanks, I'll bookmark that. But for now, I was chatting with Apple support, and the guy gave me a good tip that removed all those fake ethernet adapters. In the Network settings, click on the three dot menu and add a new location:

Most people probably only have "Automatic", so they have to go to Edit Locations and add a new name there. After I did that, I only see this in the System Report:

He also told me that maybe the router is creating these fake adapters. I guess time will tell. For now at least that's one step forward.

 

[JonaM]

I have seen this happen with machines in the past where the router and Mac disagree and it ends up with escalating the network connector - resetting the router or Mac network settings seems to fix it, but you can be reassured it's not a symptom of malware

 

[bogdanw]

View attachment 2460138

He also told me that maybe the router is creating these fake adapters. I guess time will tell. For now at least that's one step forward.

You have two USB LAN adapters. If you unplug and insert them in other USB ports, macOS might be registering them as new adapters and create en2, en3 and so on.

 

[sebalvarez]

I have seen this happen with machines in the past where the router and Mac disagree and it ends up with escalating the network connector - resetting the router or Mac network settings seems to fix it, but you can be reassured it's not a symptom of malware

That aligns with what the Apple support person told me, so thanks for confirming it. I'm definitely not that concerned now.

 

[sebalvarez]

You have two USB LAN adapters. If you unplug and insert them in other USB ports, macOS might be registering them as new adapters and create en2, en3 and so on.

Well, those are not separate adapters. They are part of the port set in my two Samsung monitors, which also act as USB hubs and ethernet adapters. Problem is, once you turn them off, the adapters are off too, so you can't do something like a multilink ethernet if your router supported it, which in my case it does.