Mac updates made me think I had malware too. It randomly pops up a box that says System Update needs your administrator password. Completely unprompted, zero context. Sketchy as hell looking. Happens every time MacOS downloads an automatic update.
Agreed. Password prompting for installs on macos needs a lot of love. It’s really encouraging users to become comfortable with potentially dangerous behavior.
Whilst I agree that this is an annoyance and can form bad habits in users (as another comment pointed out), in modern macOS systems, what you’re actually being asked for is the credentials of the “volume owner” to perform a change to the sealed system volume. This is indicated in the dialog, but agree that it could be clearer and less jarring.
Does it say what program need administrador privileges? IIRC Linux are doing this since around 20 years ago
Here's a pic of the popup https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254241562?sortBy=best . To me, it sounds trivial to name your malware app "System Update", and that's probably the best thing to name it. So you can't know who or what is requesting full root access, completely out of the blue, unless maybe it says somewhere deep in Activity Monitor. My habit is to always close it, and if I want to update, go to System Update myself. Then at least I know I probably triggered the popup.