nsurlsessiond eating all the bandwidth

[sigmadog]

I've got a 6,1 (trashcan) and the last couple days my internet / network connections have been super slow. It's so bad that The Missus, who works from home in the other room has complained that she can't get any work done.

I've narrowed the problem down to my 6,1 Mac Pro and a stubborn nsurlsessiond that is monopolizing the internet connection. My understanding is that this has something to do with iCloud syncing. But since we generally avoid iCloud and have very little data in it (less than 500mb), I can't figure out why this connection is persisting for days.

Possible solutions have been tried:

1. Using Terminal to kill the "trustd" and then removing the offending folder in /var/folders/zz. Tried this repeatedly without success (as found in this article).
2. Using Activity monitor to select "nsurlsessiond" and selecting "Quit Process" from the View menu only works for a couple minutes, then it reappears and bandwidth usage jumps up again, and The Missus starts screaming.

I'm getting irritated enough that I'm almost ready to try wiping my os drive and reloading Mac Os and Applications from scratch, as I can't think of anything else to solve this problem. Nothing like wasting several days re-loading apps and ****.

Any ideas to try?

 

[Bigwaff]

Any VPN software or iCloud Private Rely enabled?

 

[sigmadog]

Any VPN software or iCloud Private Rely enabled?

No VPN. Don't know what iCloud Private Rely is, so I'm gonna say "no".

 

[sigmadog]

My solution: I created a new Administrative user and will slowly move critical files from old user to new user. Eventually I will delete the old user completely.

This solution appears to be working. My network usage has dropped significantly and there have been no complaints from The Missus. It's a bit of a hassle re-establishing credentials for email, passwords, etc., but it sure beats reloading everything from scratch.

 

[Bigwaff]

You may want to try a firewall application like Radio Silence. Should help you figure out where "nsurlsessiond" connecting to. Unfortunately, "nsurlsessiond" is a system process that can be used by any application or process, not just iCloud processes. I'm guessing you may have inadvertantly installed malware.

 

[sigmadog]

You may want to try a firewall application like Radio Silence. Should help you figure out where "nsurlsessiond" connecting to. Unfortunately, "nsurlsessiond" is a system process that can be used by any application or process, not just iCloud processes. I'm guessing you may have inadvertantly installed malware.

Yeah, that was in the back of my mind. I'm usually pretty careful about installing software but I had a moment of weakness last week (looking at AI art generators) and a crappy app got loaded. I thought I'd deleted it all, but I think something snuck in.

Things are much better now with the new user account, but I'll look at Radio Silence as well. Thanks!