HP Printer “Malware” Pop Up (MacOS Catalina)
I had two clients who both came to me today separately with the exact same problem, they called me with news that a pop-up had suddenly appeared on their computer screen which said it found “malware”. This is the PopUp (below) which as you can see says: “HPDeviceMonitoring.framework” will damage your computer.
The popup came back instantly after clicking OK, no matter how many times you click it, so they really found it impossible to use the computer at all as it covered up a good part of the laptop’s screen. The wording is a big scary – “will damage your computer” and they both were a bit freaked out. Both of them had upgraded MacOS to Catalina pretty recently. Catalina has been reported as having greatly increased security and not getting along with some things the way Mojave did. I had them do a scan using Malwarebytes for Mac – it found “no malware”.
So this seemed to have something else as the cause. Doing a little more research on this subject I found reports of this issue with people saying it was a “signing” problem with HP’s printer drivers, due to HP not having updated their software to Apple’s increased security standards in Catalina – therefore HP drivers were no longer being recognized as “signed” and legitimate and hence the pop up “report malware to Apple”.
So the good news is this is not actually real “Malware”. It was basically HP and Apple not being on the same page. I would guess it was likely HP’s fault for not fixing the code in their Mac printer drivers software to Apple’s increased security specs.
To fix issue, you can remove or uninstall HP’s printer driver and/or software (Check if there is an Uninstall inside HP folder in Applications. You might try instead simply Deleting the current HP printer from Printers and Scanners – then re-adding it using “AirPrint”.
On one computer I actually had to go into the client’s Library and remove the entire “HP” folder inside Library/Printers in the root directory. This fixed the issue and simply using System Preferences/add printer with Apple’s own HP driver — by selecting AirPrint — removed the pop-ups and kept the printer working normally. BTW Mojave may do the same thing.
Hope this helps if you have this issue!
