Safari 8 on Yosemite spawns process causing a CPU load spike

Question

Level 1

26 points

Safari 8 on Yosemite spawns process causing a CPU load spike

My Safari 8 running on MacBook Pro (Late 2013)/Yosemite was hijacked by Open-Search.com after updating OS to Yosemite 10.10. The affect seems two fold, my home page was hijacked by Open-Search/MacKeeper and the CPU started to load spikes at regular intervals. After a lot of digging I've removed the resources for Open-Search/MacKeeper ending the hijack. However distnoted, SubPubAgent and nsurlstoraged are showing up in the Activity Monitor and dumping the following log entry in the Message log file

11/3/14 12:58:35.657 PM nsurlstoraged[233]: DiskCookieStorage changing policy from 2 to 0, cookie file: ///Users/<username>/Library/Cookies/Cookies.binarycookies

11/3/14 12:58:35.658 PM nsurlstoraged[233]: DiskCookieStorage changing policy from 0 to 2, cookie file: ///Users/<username>/Library/Cookies/Cookies.binarycookies

This entry repeats about 4000 times spiking the CPU over 300% and actuating the fan, making Safari dangerous to run. Once I quit out of Safari, the process ends and everything runs as expected. Here is the whole Safari launch process.

11/3/14 3:28:46.598 PM nsurlstoraged[232]: DiskCookieStorage changing policy from 0 to 2, cookie file: file:///Users/username/Library/Cookies/Cookies.binarycookies

11/3/14 3:28:46.613 PM storeaccountd[285]: AccountServiceDelegate: Accepting new connection <NSXPCConnection: 0x7fb9bd818dd0> connection from pid 538 with interface <AccountServiceInterface: 0x7fb9bd81fbe0> (PID 538)

11/3/14 3:28:46.728 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.imfoundation.IMRemoteURLConnectionAgent) The _DirtyJetsamMemoryLimit key is not available on this platform.

11/3/14 3:28:46.765 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.imfoundation.IMRemoteURLConnectionAgent) The _DirtyJetsamMemoryLimit key is not available on this platform.

11/3/14 3:28:46.927 PM locationd[55]: Couldn't find a requirement string for masquerading client /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Parsec.framework

11/3/14 3:28:46.928 PM locationd[55]: could not get apple languages array, assuming english

11/3/14 3:28:46.930 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.imfoundation.IMRemoteURLConnectionAgent) The _DirtyJetsamMemoryLimit key is not available on this platform.

11/3/14 3:21:19.295 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.PubSub.Agent[503]) Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.pubsub.ipc

11/3/14 3:21:19.295 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.PubSub.Agent[503]) Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.pubsub.notification

11/3/14 3:21:56.010 PM CoreServicesUIAgent[240]: unexpected message <OS_xpc_error: <error: 0x7fff7bd13c60> { count = 1, contents = "XPCErrorDescription" => <string: 0x7fff7bd13f70> { length = 18, contents = "Connection invalid" }}>

11/3/14 3:22:29.019 PM nsurlstoraged[232]: DiskCookieStorage changing policy from 0 to 2, cookie file: file:///Users/username/Library/Cookies/Cookies.binarycookies

11/3/14 3:22:29.020 PM nsurlstoraged[232]: DiskCookieStorage changing policy from 2 to 0, cookie file: file:///Users/username/Library/Cookies/Cookies.binarycookies

I've tried a couple things including adding the log file do_dnserver_log with `touch /var/log/do_dnserver_log`. This minimized the problem, but didn't solve it. The CPU load is still intermittently spiking and the system.log filing with DiskCookieStorage entries. Any help is appreciated since I use Safari for development work.

Regards

Ron

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Nov 3, 2014 1:37 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Ron White Author

Level 1

26 points

Nov 3, 2014 2:34 PM in response to Ron White

I would like to add that I believe the initial "hijacking" occurred when I loaded duckduckgo extension through the Safari extensions preference pane. Through I cant confirm it, circumstance says that's when the hijack and then the CPU spikes began.

Reply

Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Nov 3, 2014 5:04 PM in response to Ron White

You may have installed the "VSearch" trojan. Remove it as follows.

Malware is always changing to get around the defenses against it. These instructions are valid as of now, as far as I know. They won't necessarily be valid in the future. Anyone finding this comment a few days or more after it was posted should look for more recent discussions or start a new one.

Back up all data before proceeding.

Step 1

From the Safari menu bar, select

Safari ▹ Preferences... ▹ Extensions

Uninstall any extensions you don't know you need, including any that have the word "Spigot," "Trovi," or "Conduit" in the description. If in doubt, uninstall all extensions. Do the equivalent for the Firefox and Chrome browsers, if you use either of those.

Reset the home page and default search engine in all the browsers, if it was changed.

Step 2

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

/Library/LaunchAgents/com.vsearch.agent.plist

Right-click or control-click the line and select

Services ▹ Reveal in Finder (or just Reveal)

from the contextual menu.* A folder should open with an item named "com.vsearch.agent.plist" selected. Drag the selected item to the Trash. You may be prompted for your administrator login password.

Repeat with each of these lines:

/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.vsearch.daemon.plist
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.vsearch.helper.plist

Restart the computer and empty the Trash. Then delete the following items in the same way:

/Library/Application Support/VSearch
/System/Library/Frameworks/VSearch.framework
~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ConduitNPAPIPlugin.plugin

Some of these items may be absent, in which case you'll get a message that the file can't be found. Skip that item and go on to the next one.

The problem may have started when you downloaded and ran an application called "MPlayerX." That's the name of a legitimate free movie player, but the name is also used fraudulently to distribute VSearch. If there is an item with that name in the Applications folder, delete it, and if you wish, replace it with the genuine article from mplayerx.org.

This trojan is often found on illegal websites that traffic in pirated content such as movies. If you, or anyone else who uses the computer, visit such sites and follow prompts to install software, you can expect more of the same, and worse, to follow.

You may be wondering why you didn't get a warning from Gatekeeper about installing software from an unknown developer, as you should have. The reason is that the Internet criminal behind VSearch has a codesigning certificate issued by Apple, which causes Gatekeeper to give the installer a pass. Apple could revoke the certificate, but as of this writing has not done so, even though it's aware of the problem. This failure of oversight has compromised both Gatekeeper and the Developer ID program. You can't rely on Gatekeeper alone to protect you from harmful software.

*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

Reply

Answer 3

Ron White Author

Level 1

26 points

Nov 3, 2014 5:25 PM in response to Linc Davis

Hi Linc,

I had and used your post earlier to help remove the VSearch files and resources. The CPU was still spiking after the fact. I was able to get it figured out though with the help of another guy over at StackExchange - Ask Different. Here are the additional steps required to get my situation corrected:

Step 1: sudo rm -f ~/Library/Cookies/Cookies.binarycookies

enter password

Step 2: Select Clear History and Website Data from Safari menu; click Clear History button in dialog box. This resets Safari

Step 3: Then force quit Safari from the context menu by clicking Cnt + icon in the dock.

Step 4: Finally, fully power down (Shut Down not Restart) the machine and then restart.

These steps in addition to your steps above finally fixed the problem, at least for my setup. Thanks for the feedback and your original post.

Ron

Reply

Answer 4

Jun 7, 2015 10:43 AM in response to Ron White

Hi Ron

This failed to help my situation and merely rid me of my [useful] Safari history.

According to another thread, all of the "… is not available on this platform" refers to parts of the code that has been ported from iOS and not fully integrated into MacOS yet. Not problematic despite the manifold reports generated in Console.

Reply

Answer 5

Sep 12, 2015 6:56 PM in response to Ron White

I believe I have solved the problem with my MacBook. I had a program that would sync to the provider of the program. I also noticed that it was syncing to Icloud as well. I have now switched off the Icloud sync for the program and it has solved my problem. What was happening I believe is the 2 syncs were chasing each other to the 2 different clouds. (Probably not worded very well but I think you guys will know what I mean) I tried the script that was written to stop nsurlstoraged from working. But I found this sync problem this morning (20150913 Sunday). I hope this helps you all that are having the same problem - losing all your data download etc. It also upset my network by saturating it and causing the backups to fail. Cheers all. Peter

Reply