Following hard on the heels of my updated version of XProCheck, here’s an update to SilentKnight to bring it to version 2.4, with similarly improved analysis and reporting of XProtect Remediator (XPR) anti-malware scans.

When all is going swimmingly, this is what the new version should look like, here on an Apple silicon Mac with a Mac Studio display attached. As before, at the upper right it states that 60 scans were completed by XPR without any warnings. In the full report below, you’ll see a little more detail, that those 60 scans completed without any alerts or warnings.

When it has been one of those days, you might, if you’re very unlucky, see something like this. While a total of 52 XPR scans have been reported, six of them are graded as alerts, indicating that XPR detected and/or remediated malware, according to its reports. This is again given in detail in the full report.

Because of the limited space available in the individual boxes in the upper part of the window, SilentKnight only reports the worst of results; if there are alerts and warnings, then the scan result will give the number of alerts. But a detailed breakdown of both alerts and warnings will be given below.

The many other warnings shown here are because this was obtained from one of my virtual machines, running with Permissive Security, SIP disabled, and Gatekeeper/XProtect checks disabled. I also deliberately keep it out of date for other security updates such as XProtect. I hope your Mac doesn’t look anything like that!

As with XProCheck, SilentKnight is now more nuanced in its interpretation of scan reports:

• reports stating that malware was detected and/or remediated are counted as alerts, and given the sign ⛔️;
• reports of signature errors that occur following XPR updates aren’t counted as scan reports, and don’t count as warnings;
• reports of scans that report anything else, apart from a normal result, are counted as warnings with the sign ⚠️.

Should you see any alerts or warnings, then I recommend that you run a fuller check using XProCheck, to provide details of all scan results.

SilentKnight version 2.4 is now available from here: silentknight204
from Downloads above, from its Product Page, and via its auto-update mechanism.

In case you missed it, XProCheck 1.4 is now available from here: xprocheck14
from Downloads above, from its Product Page, and via its auto-update mechanism.

Both of these are Universal Apps for Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey and Ventura. Older versions of SilentKnight for older macOS remain available from its Product Page.