FS Protection for Mac 19.4 releases
FS Protection for Mac 19.4 releases will be posted under this thread.
Best regards, Arthur
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
Answers
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Release 19.4 beta 1 (build 60628)
We are pleased to announce the availability of a new release of FS Protection for Mac. This update is available for download from My FS Protection and delivery to existing installations will be started later.
Highlights of this release:
- New completely refactored Anti-Virus component stack. Rewritten from scratch to optimise for modern macOS versions, improve performance and enrich the feature stack
- Trusted Shopping feature. Get notifications about trustworthiness score from extensions in the supported browsers whenever visiting a shopping website. The feature can be configured in product settings.
- Updates tab. Product settings UI has a new section which shows the state of product updates including the timeline of last received updates and statistics on when the last update check attempt took place
Known issues:
- New Anti-Virus component might report an already trashed infection repeatedly
- Missing localisations
These issues will be fixed in an upcoming beta release.
If you experience any issues, please report them in this forum. Please run "Support Tool" when the issue happens and be prepared to provide the resulting file if we requested. For issues related to Browsing protection and Parental control, remember to include any URLs that reproduce the problem in your bug report. You may also submit false positives and uncategorized web pages directly to F-Secure Labs using https://www.f-secure.com/en/web/labs_global/submit-a-sample#sample-url
As always, we welcome any feedback via the community pages!
Best regards, Arthur
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
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I'm running 19.4 60628 on a Mac Pro (Intel), with Sonoma 14.1.
Since the update to 19.4, I've been getting frequent lag waiting for response when opening windows, browsing the web, etc. These periods of lag correspond with high CPU usage on the process wscscannermanagerd. This lag was not present on the prior version of F-secure.
If I disable scanning using the F-Secure settings, then normal functionality returns.
I'm not able to use my computer normally unless I disable F-Secure 19.4
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Release 19.4 beta 2 (build 60787)
We are pleased to announce the availability of a new release of FS Protection for Mac. This update is available for download from My FS Protection and delivery to existing installations will be started later today.
Highlights of this release:
- Improved performance of the new Anti-Virus component
- Improved resilience to unstable network conditions of the new Anti-Virus component
- Improved handling of database engine updates in cases when the new Anti-Virus component is unconfigured
- Added an option to product settings to configure visibility of browser extension popups about visiting safe/suspicious shopping websites
Known issues:
- Fixed: New Anti-Virus component might report an already trashed infection repeatedly
- Fixed: Missing localisations
If you experience any issues, please report them in this forum. Please run "Support Tool" when the issue happens and be prepared to provide the resulting file if we requested. For issues related to Browsing protection and Parental control, remember to include any URLs that reproduce the problem in your bug report. You may also submit false positives and uncategorized web pages directly to F-Secure Labs using https://www.f-secure.com/en/web/labs_global/submit-a-sample#sample-url
As always, we welcome any feedback via the community pages!
Best regards, Arthur
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
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Hi, @bobbyw!
Thanks for the report! We just made a new release available which targets performance and improved handling of unstable network conditions.
Could you please monitor if there any improvements on your Intel machine once FS Protection upgrades to build 60787? We would appreciate if you could share the output of Support Tool app (fsdiag archive with diagnostics) if you are still encountering issues after upgrading to the latest FS Protection beta version.
Thanks!
Best regards, Arthur
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
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Release 19.4 beta 3 (build 60838)
We are pleased to announce the availability of a new release of FS Protection for Mac. This update is available for download from My FS Protection and delivery to existing installations also started.
Highlights of this release:
- macOS 11 (Big Sur) support dropped
- Added missing product telemetry for database engine updates
- Improved Safari extension detection state
- Implemented AV components status monitoring and issue remediation
If you experience any issues, please report them in this forum. Please run "Support Tool" when the issue happens and be prepared to provide the resulting file if we requested. For issues related to Browsing protection and Parental control, remember to include any URLs that reproduce the problem in your bug report. You may also submit false positives and uncategorized web pages directly to F-Secure Labs using https://www.f-secure.com/en/web/labs_global/submit-a-sample#sample-url
As always, we welcome any feedback via the community pages!
Best regards, Arthur
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
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Hi,
I am running 19.4 (60838) in i5 Macbook air with Sonoma 14.2.1 for few weeks now (meaning Total, 14.2.1 is more recent).
Experience is terrible: computer freezes when opening applications, or even sometimes making selections within an application (no matter which application).
All these incidents are related to above mentioned wscscannermanagerd hogging 99,x% of CPU.
I was using alternate protection product for a year, and not decided to get back to F-Secure as I had a free license left. But it seems that performance with F-Secure Total for Mac has degraded very badly since the previous versions.
Are there any remedies for this, or is it just time to forget F-Secure products with Macs?
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Thanks for the report!
Could you share please if there are some specific applications that you are experiencing troubles with?
Does disabling of "Deeper anaysis" in product "Privacy" settings improve the situation?
The latest file scanning changes could have changed the behaviour of which files get selected for AV scanning which could result in different observations of performance in various tasks. We might want to look into specifics if that 's not an overall situation on the system and ask our analysts to whitelist these samples so that the product starts trusting them more.
Best regards, Arthur
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
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There are not specific apps that would trigger this. It seems to be same with all.
Disabling "Deeper analyses" does not have any significant effect either, the wscscannermanagerd still peaks to 97...99.x% level. It might be that this peak is a bit shorter, but launching apps is still very slow. And for example search in your password vault brings the "beach ball" after first few letters for the first search, and this takes tens of seconds.
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Same problem here: Intel Macbook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Four Thunderbolt ports) and beachball again and again (e.g. Safari and WhatsApp), but went away by disabling automatic scanning (disabling 'deeper analysis' didn't help). And it's something that's started fairly recently, though I couldn't say for sure if it was an F-Secure update.
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Let's start with submitting product diagnostics. There is a parallel investigation with a couple of internal reports about a similar issue. It would help a lot if we could receive output of Support Tool from your machines. That would help us a lot to isolate the issue.
I'll send you a private message with instructions in a moment.
Best regards, Arthur
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
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Hi... I have also had the same problem with my iMac (intel), using 9.4 with Sonoma, for a while and didn't know what was causing the problem until I checked the memory usage... And, as has been said, wscscannermanagerd definitely is hogging the memory... I don't have the same problem with my laptop (M1) so I guess it is an intel thing.
Do you have any advice... This is more than just inconvenient...
Regards
Chris Barringtom
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Hi!
We are currently working on a potential fix. But in the meanwhile, we are trying to collect as much diagnostic information as possible to find commonalities between the reports.
So far, we've been unable to reproduce the issue on our internal testing Intel Macs. So it seems that there is a specific set of conditions for this behaviour to surface which does not happen in our testing.
I would ask you to share the product diagnostics. I'll send a private message with instructions in a moment.
Best regards, Arthur
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
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@ChrisBarrington, @K_P, @User_93734
Thanks for providing product diagnostics! We have identified a few places that might have been causing the effect that you've been observing.
We are currently preparing a product hotfix release which either potentially fixes the issue or at least improves the performance to an acceptable level.
I will ping here once again it's out and available for installation. No action is needed from your end to install it. The product will automatically handle the installation once the hotfix is available.
Best regards, Arthur
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
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I've just started using your product a couple of weeks ago, and my M1 Max F-secure has significantly impacted its performance.
I'm running macOS Sonoma 14.2.1.
I ;ve already tried some of the suggestions mentioned in the forum, but I don't want to sacrifice too much of what the product is intended to do.
Hopefully, these issues are addressed in a hotfix soon, as I would hate to have to request a refund.
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a hotfix has been released to beta customers today. and we're aiming at releasing it to all customers with a 1-2 day delay, depending on feedback and telemetry. Thus if you're a beta customer, you should see the hotfix being installed overnight or when your computer comes online in the morning.
Rasmus Sten
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
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Will the hotfix also address issues with fscesproviderd process crashing periodically through out the day?
Today alone, I'm seeing 12 instances of it crashing in the console.
Process: fscesproviderd [49791]
Path: /Library/F-Secure/*/fscesproviderd
Identifier: com.f-secure.fscesproviderd
Version: 3.0.60838 (60838)
Code Type: ARM-64 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [1]
User ID: 0
Date/Time: 2024-01-08 19:15:27.2279 -0500
OS Version: macOS 14.2.1 (23C71)
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Hi @Jplfsecure,
without the full crash report I can't answer whether this is the case. Most likely yes, as most fscesproviderd crashes we see are the result of an overloaded system due to some of the issues we addressed in the hotfix (not technically crashes, but rather macOS killing the process because it hasn't been able to respond in time). But I'd need to see the complete crash report so say for sure. Feel free to send it to me in a PM and I can take a look.
Rasmus Sten
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
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@ChrisBarrington, @K_P, @User_93734
The hotfix is now published to production for F-Secure TOTAL Mac product. The products check for applicable hotfixes once per day. it will be installed automatically within one day.
Alternatively, you can also manually force the installation immediately by running the command below in the Terminal app.
notifyutil -p com.f-secure.check-for-hotfixes
In order to verify that the hotfix is installed, you can run this command
sudo cat /Library/F-Secure/hotfix-store/installed-hotfixes.json | json_pp
followed by admin password. It should print out that hotfix with ID 13 and name "ScannerManagerPerformanceHotfix" is installed on the system.
It the command above generates an error saying "No such file or directory", it means that the hotfix has not been installed yet.
Please let us know if you observe any improvements once the hotifx is installed on your systems.
Thanks!
Best regards, Arthur
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
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Hotfix seems to be here. Will take some time to see whats the real impact. First observation is promising.
I noticed an other thing. Not sure is this is something that has been here before but:
- I have account "A" that I use for daily stuff. This is restricted account. With this account I have logged in into F-Secure Total as "protect myself".
- To check whether the hot fix has been installed, I logged in with account "B", that has admin previledges.
- For account "B" F-Secure Total keeps claiming that protection is out of date, altough via Settings -> Configurations it claims succesfull update. This sounds like a bug?
- Also, for account "B" F-Secure Total claims that I would need to login to protect that account, but when logging in into Total I can not select same protectee that I have selected when logging into F-Secure for account "A" ("protecting myself"). This seems that in this case, having restricted account and admin account separated in laptop, I would need two licenses?
Are these intented behavior: not being able to update protection in same device, and requiring two licenses in same laptop for virus portection (lets forget wault etc. in this scenario)?
Edit update: it seems that also with account "A" the main inteface keeps claiming that "protection is out of date", while drop menu from the small F logo claims up-to-date. When viewing update via Settings there is green dot, but update history for Hydra and Capricorn updates shows "failed".
Also, performance is rather sporadic: some thing seems to work better after hotfix, but e.g. opening simple screeshot png or two page pdf to native preview app takes 10...20 seconds. It was not like that before 19.4 update.
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Hi @K_P, basically, for your use case I would recommend not logging into the app with account B. The product doesn't support logging in to multiple macOS users on the same machine with the same account. All protection features (antivirus, Browsing Protection and DeepGuard) are available to all users regardless if one of them isn't logged in to an F-Secure account.
Regarding your update issues, please run Support Tool and supply us with the resulting fsdiag file via a private message and we can hopefully understand why they are failing. If the updates show up as "failed" but update check was successful it means that they've been downloaded but can't be taken into use for some reason. The Support Tool diagnostics should be able to tell us why those updates are rejected.
Rasmus Sten
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
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I have the hotfix now as well, but some 3rd party apps I commonly still take a long time to load due to F-secure scanning them at startup.
Only way around it seems to be adding them as scanning exclusion.
One app in particular is Obsidian (Obsidian.md) which is just a note-taking app.
Another is Librewolf, a web browser.
I don't experience this issue with Apple's suite apps, which I expected.
Is adding apps to the scanning exclusion lost the only way to speed things up?
If I have to do for every app I use most often, it's not ideal and quite cumbersome.
I'm coming from Sophos Home Premium, which didn't do this, but the downside is that it used significantly more memory on average.
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Hi,
thanks for your detailed symptom description and it's very useful to know which apps you use. One of the changes in 19.4 is that we perform deeper cloud analysis of rare files. However, the verdict of that analysis should be cached, so it should only affect the first launch of an app. For example, if I launch Obsidian on my 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 MacBook Pro, the first launch takes a bit over 10 seconds, but the next launch takes less than one second. Is this consistent with your experience, i.e. is the app launch faster on second launch?
We have discovered some cases where the cache isn't populated properly if this "deeper analysis" takes longer than expected. This is something we will address in an upcoming update.
Regarding LibreWolf, out of curiosity, do you install it via Homebrew or via disk image?
As a result of the deeper cloud analysis, our systems will gather information about various third-party software over time. Once a sample has been analysed by our backend systems, a deeper analysis will no longer be needed. Thus we do expect performance to increase over time as this update rolls out to more users and our backends learns about more software. There are also cases where this deeper analysis doesn't make sense, for example locally built software. For those cases, it may make sense exclude that particular location from scanning. We're looking at ways to detect and improve this use case as well.
Finally, a way to speed things up is disabling deeper analysis, which cone be done in the product Settings → Privacy. The product will still do cloud lookups but not do cloud analysis of unknown software. You can also completely disable cloud malware checks by disabling "Use cloud-based file reputation" in the Viruses and Threats tab. You will still be protected by the local scan engines.
If you do choose any of the above workarounds please let us know. We appreciate the feedback and will improve the performance continuously over time, and your feedback helps us a lot in that regard.
Rasmus Sten
F-Secure Technology, Mac Team
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Update on performance after hotfix: performance issues do continue. They are independent whethet it is Apple's native app or 3rd party.
For example, first launch of Brave Browser takes 55 seconds.
Opening single page pdf to PreviewApp takes that 10...20 seconds like reported above. For each file, every time.
In LibreOffice Calc, when I click spread sheet cell and start to type, it takes 20 or so seconds before I can write anything into that cell. This happens for each cell.
From the settings "Allow deeper analyses" has been disabled.
I reconize that i5 with 16gigs mem is not that much, but things used to work much faster before 19.4.
Regarding update problem, I'll send diagnostic tool logs as private message.
