A heads-up: macOS MRT 1.68 update causing problems—excessive CPU usage

Latte Other Software & Development
1

It was originally thought to be an issue for Sierra and El Capitan OSs but there’s reports for others as well. One symptom is high CPU usage (possibly trustd and MRT) as shown in Activity Monitor app. The machine becomes sluggish and system logs get accordingly filled.

If affected, see the article comment section here which includes workarounds:
eclecticlight.co/2020/10/19/app … nd-mrt-17/

[MRTsecurity-configuration updates are one of the so called background (silent) ones:
support.apple.com/en-us/HT207005]

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To close the book on this:

Apple pulled the MRT 1.68 update from the catalogue and reissued 1.67 late on 10/23. This potentially helped those who hadn’t received 1.68 yet but not those who had; 1.67 could not overwrite 1.68.

If you’ve limped through with 1.68, Apple has since (10/30) released an update for MRT to 1.69.3. This has reportedly fixed the issues users were having.