What is this "open" exec file?

cdngntwrk wrote:

I thought so too. But the developer is unidentified and I go the notification only after I updated to Ventura 13.2.1 and on top of that I disabled it. Everything works as it should so far.

It’s just a bug in Apple’s Ventura operating system. The developer probably is properly identified. It seems that whoever wrote this new user interface in Ventura didn’t understand how the underlying functionality worked. It’s quite disgraceful.

cdngntwrk wrote:

Think so, like can one be sure? If thats the case im relieved. Was quite worried some sort of malware made it to onto my Mac.

No. I can't be "sure". I wrote an app that delves very deeply into this so I know what the general landscape looks like. Most legitimate apps are properly signed. Using commands like "open" or "osascript" in a launchd task like this is, or was, perfectly legitimate.

These commands are a way to push past the divide between the background, command-line world of the launchd subsystem and the user interface. When a developer uses "open" or "osascript", they do so because they want their app to run. They want the user to run their app, visibly and on purpose. By comparison, malware wants to hide. It wants to run unnoticed in the background.

I have not seen any of these new Ventura notifications display any instances of malware.

It is the command line Utility to open things. Some app you installed is using it to open something.

You can run Etrecheck and see in its report which application is using the open command.

If you need assistance you can post the report here.

Almost all of everything in there will be from an unidentified developer. I think open was actually written by Apple, but most are not.

You can be sure by knowing what’s installed on your Mac.

You can also be sure because that file is part of the read-only system volume so nothing could possibly install it there.