Applies to: Sophos Home Premium and Free (Mac)
What's happening
On a MacOS computer that uses applications such as Virtual Machines, or has other Anti-malware software present, , a Sophos Home alert is received stating This Device is Vulnerable, however, all the protections are enabled in the dashboard.
This issue may happen if the Mac computer has too many applications using virtual slots, thus, there is no slot to add Sophos Home kexts.
This is a macOS limitation regarding virtual devices slots. When the system does not have enough virtual device slots, whichever application loads last will be unable to load its kexts.
Symptoms:
All scenarios as per this article have been covered, yet the problem persists.
Furthermore, you see that code "dc008017" is present in the logs, by following these steps:
Access Spotlight by clicking on the magnifying glass
Type Terminal and hit Enter
Inside the terminal, type:
cd /Library/Logs
(Hit Enter)
zgrep dc008017 SophosDiagnostics*
(Hit Enter)
(click on the animation to see it in full screen)
If no results are shown, then most likely, this is not the issue affecting your system, please refer to the scenarios listed above. If there is a result, then jump to the Workaround section.
Workaround
Before trying this workaround, ensure you have tried the most common scenarios that cause the issue, listed here: Sophos Home for MacOS shows that this device is vulnerable - 99% of the times, the issue can be fixed by following those steps.
If all fails, despite having followed the common scenarios, you'll need to remove one (or more) of the applications that are using virtual slots (such as virtual machine software, other antivirus software) , and restart the Mac computer.
Once you have removed the applications and reboot the Mac, if the problem persists, re-install Sophos Home
Related information
- Sophos Home for MacOS shows that this device is vulnerable
- Nothing happens when clicking the Allow button on macOS in Security & Privacy
- Sophos Home for MacOS shows that this device is vulnerable
- System Extension Blocked appears on new installations on macOS High Sierra 10.13
- Notifications to allow Sophos Home kernel extensions (KEXT) did not appear