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User profile for user: helohi
helohi Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Webquestsearch/webquestsearchdaemon?

So I noticed I was getting a lot of pop ups and suspicious “__ wants to access safari” things on my Mac, so I checked activity manager to see if I could do anything to fix it. I’m well aware that there are many malwares or whatever with “search” in them, so I specifically filtered for terms with “search”. When I did so, I found several things-

-SearchUp

-WebQuestSearchDaemon

-WebQuestSearch

-searchpartyd


I’ve head of WebQuestSearch being a pop up malware, but when I looked at its parent processes, I found it came from launchd and kernel_task. As far as I’m aware, kernel_task of a legitimate process that shouldn’t be deleted, so I was wondering if I should actually delete them or not. Could someone help me on this?

MacBook Air

Posted on Oct 22, 2021 3:28 PM

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User profile for user: etresoft
etresoft
User level: Level 8
47,244 points

Posted on Oct 22, 2021 4:24 PM

All processes, malicious or not, are ultimately launched from launchd and/or kernel_task. That just means that the malware is properly installed and running happily.


It sounds like you have a ton of malware installed. These days, it is pretty rare to see a "search" file like that. Most are random number or nonsense words. You may have a whole lot more malware installed.


Alas, I develop and sell an app that removes this kind of malware. The forum rules prevent me from giving you a link to it.

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User profile for user: etresoft
etresoft
User level: Level 8
47,244 points

Oct 22, 2021 4:24 PM in response to helohi

All processes, malicious or not, are ultimately launched from launchd and/or kernel_task. That just means that the malware is properly installed and running happily.


It sounds like you have a ton of malware installed. These days, it is pretty rare to see a "search" file like that. Most are random number or nonsense words. You may have a whole lot more malware installed.


Alas, I develop and sell an app that removes this kind of malware. The forum rules prevent me from giving you a link to it.

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Webquestsearch/webquestsearchdaemon?

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