Removing Malware/Adware from my mac

dan-9 wrote:

Hello everyone,

I've been trying to delete a bunch of adware such as SearchUp, WindowsAutoUpdater, Query and other programs that I must've downloaded unknowingly a while ago and have been successful in finally removing the safari pop-up adware. (For those interested in how I removed them, I followed a couple guides as follows: https://howtoremove.guide/searchup-mac/)

However, the problem has now evolved to what I assume are .plist files that are constantly asking me access to my system preferences. (I'll try to add a screenshot next time it happens)

I've removed some of the access in the System Preferences›Security and Privacy›Full Disk Access but in the System Preferences›Security and Privacy›Automation I have this issue: (see photo)

I can clearly tell this is adware/malware and I've deselected access but I haven't been able to trace the source files. Does anyone know where I might find the source files in order to delete this virus please?

Thank you in advance.

Dan

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/96a80a05-82cd-405a-bdf0-5a2c40566db3

If you suspect you have installed adware/malware:

>System Preferences>Profiles click into it and then remove all the suspicious things from the list. (This Preference pane will not be present if no profiles found.)

also Verify you are not using SOCKS proxy:

>System Preferences>Networks>Advanced>Proxy uncheck the box

Adware/malware launch daemons can set SOCKS proxies without user participation.

(SOCKS is an Internet protocol that exchanges network packets between a client and server through a proxy server.)

Adware Removal Guide—Manual removal of : http://www.thesafemac.com/arg-identification/

or

Try running this trusted utility https://www.malwarebytes.com/mac/