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I have been having multiple pop-ups since this morning, and each popup occurs around 2-3 hours after the previous one, and has the following message:

“24B93E7F-8822-4465-B473-7BE7BB8E3E4A” will damage your computer. You should move it to the Bin.

I'm on a Mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro that only supports MacOS Catalina but I’ve got a patched version of MacOS Big Sur (Patched Sur by BenSova) running. I have not downloaded anything in the last week, but the popup has started appearing since today only. I have no idea what this file is or where it is located.

Can anyone suggest any methods (without downloading an anti-virus, if possible) by which I can remove this file permanently?

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  • You can download and execute the free version of MalwareBytes : malwarebytes.com/mac
    – user415185
    Commented Aug 5, 2021 at 14:39
  • The running of modified system software would have been good to hilight (or point out how you did that to teach others it’s possible). This becomes much harder if you’re modifying the system. I’ve made an edit so people with stock systems know this is a “special case”
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Aug 5, 2021 at 15:13
  • Did you simply use the button Move to Bin?
    – athena
    Commented Aug 7, 2021 at 8:55
  • Of course I did, and it still popped up.
    – Ankit Kumar
    Commented Aug 8, 2021 at 3:32

2 Answers 2

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Since the system is modified, I’m not so sure we can even trust gatekeeper now. My answer below is still good advice (especially for people with 100% authentic macOS installations) but the waters are much muddier now that more details have come to light on this specific mac. Nothing wrong with system modifications, but they change expectations based on what specifically was disabled and changed.

With this in mind a scan by Malware Bytes is a very correct next step: https://malwarebytes.com/mac/

If the system can’t move the file to the bin, then you probably want to do an erase install. I might not reconnect a Time Machine drive if you already have a good backup from before this happened to be safe and instead connect a new drive and let the system back up.

You might even try booting in safe mode and applying all security updates and then boot again in safe mode to make one new backup to a new direct attached hard drive. This may prevent the periodic script that is trying to reinstall something bad from running.

At that point, you can erase the mac and then move your data back. The system is designed to eliminate a threat like this and if clicking the button doesn’t clean it - you need special skills, special additional software to avoid an erase install.

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  • The reinstallation of MacOS will take a lot of time, and considering my daily screen time average is around 11 hours as I work on it, I can't afford that much time.
    – Ankit Kumar
    Commented Aug 5, 2021 at 13:49
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    You can ignore backups and ignore that your Mac is compromised by a known malicious file (or malfunctioning at a very low level). The situation doesn’t care for your work load so this is how to do what you asked. No worries if you choose to postpone the cleanup. At some point the system will crash so keep this in your back pocket for when needed. If you can get by ignoring the alert, we’ve all been there - best of luck @AnkitKumar
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Aug 5, 2021 at 13:54
  • I'm currently trying using MalwareBytes, and will probably wait for a week. If this problem is not solved by any other means by then, then I'd take a backup and reinstall. Most troublesome part of this is that I have Patched version of Big Sur installed because my MacBook Pro doesn't support it yet (only up to Catalina is supported.) I'm keeping reinstalling as a last resort.
    – Ankit Kumar
    Commented Aug 5, 2021 at 13:59
  • 2
    @AnkitKumar if this causes severe damage, then you might wish you had spent a relatively small amount of time now.
    – Solar Mike
    Commented Aug 5, 2021 at 14:23
  • 2
    I used MalwareBytes yesterday, and it discovered 11 files, out of which 9 were Adware, and 2 were potentially unwanted files (something like that). I clicked on remove so it removed them and after that I restarted as it told me to and haven't gotten any popups since then.
    – Ankit Kumar
    Commented Aug 6, 2021 at 10:46
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In the usual case this alert presents the name of a file or application, so you might try searching for a file with the name "24B93E7F-8822-4465-B473-7BE7BB8E3E4A" using a Finder search or a file system search app (I use Easy Find, freeware from Devon Technologies). Once you've found it, you can delete it.

Files with UUIDs as filenames are usually scratch files used by applications or the system to store data the user shouldn't be interested in. If one gets moved or corrupted it could trigger this kind of warning, I suppose. It's probably not anything explicitly dangerous, but to be on the safe side I wouldn't try opening it.

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  • I used it, but no results appeared, though it may be because MalwareBytes had removed the file already because I ran MalwareBytes before using Easy Find. Though the app is indeed very useful, thank you for bringing it to my notice.
    – Ankit Kumar
    Commented Aug 6, 2021 at 10:48

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