installed fake adobe flash file

It is clear that Adobe Flash Player had been discontinued since 31 December 2020. So It is no longer available. No it' easy to be called as Malware. Delete it before gettin infected. It is best to download MalwareBytes. It is free. CleanMyMacX requires a paid subscription.

Also follow Apple’s advice on Admin and User accounts.

Set up separate Admin and User accounts and log into the User account for the day to day. This is a really good approach to prevent privilege escalation type things. And log into iCloud on the User account not the Admin one.

It sounds like you’re fine. But some good hardening tips. :D

How to: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203998

Rather difficult to say. Ok - upgrade to 11.4 now. Then run Etre check and let us know anything odd as well.

But get 11.4 now, 99% if it did anything 11.4 will stop it

• If you didn’t authorise it - you could be fine. But you’re crackers not to be 11.4 so do that quicksticks

Antivirus apps won't be able to do anything. It's not a virus. it's malware.

CleanMyMac is complete garbage.

Remove all of the antivirus applications you installed, as well as CMM.

Then download etrecheck from etrecheck.com and post the report it generates here.

by the way, Flash has been dead for over 5 months now. Adobe killed it.

Quite malicious malware if it’s all the same

I had to pretty much nuke my system when i did this without paying attention last year.

No AV worked.

If it was similar to what i got you need to do a factory reset- like following the Apple -“I’m selling my computer” advice. Otherwise these things persist

Oh it goes without saying you should be 11.4 ASAP. Apple are actively, very quickly and rather brilliantly addressing some issues so you would be remiss not to take advantage of that. If me i would:

(1) factory reset (recovery partition and erase the root volume)

(2) get yourself to 11.4 quicksticks

(3) keep up to date with auto Software Update

Don’t say virus around these parts haha. It’s version 2 of the Parisian immortals.

Too late for? If it’s what I got it takes about 24 hours to do it’s privilege escalation.

You will need factory reset then update. And you need to be super careful of accessing any files from the infected system. In fact i would recommend using a totally clean Apple ID.

Plan B is take it to Apple and get them to do their special nuke. Or restore and revive.

Get to 11.4 - 11.4 will protect you from pretty much all the exploits it used. It’s gold

** Sounds like Shlayer. I got it and i didn’t even know it was Flash, i was in a rush trying to install something else and apparently that is what i approved. You will need some heavy erase and restore.

Also - until you are sorted, keep your other Apple wonder gadgets on different iClouds and not syncing with the suspect Mac. Shutoff Bluetooth, Handoff, Airdrop on the suspect one and get that fixed. Also make sure your other things are up to date too. Don’t waste time when Apple release updates. They are super important

EtreCheck is used to check for issues. Any problems like the mac is freezing, or the Mac crashed repeatedly.

No. If you installed the fake flash. Open System Preferences and open he Flash Player Pane. Screenshot it and post it.