[sam_goody]

Is there a good on-demand antivirus for Mac?

The only two I know of is Malwarebytes and Kaspersky.

The former installs with root privileges, runs on boot and cannot be ever closed, despite the fact that it is only an on-demand scanner. I've written to them to request an explanation, and did not get any response.

Kaspersky has had a fair share of rumors against it, and I am not in a position to evaluate if they are trustworthy.

[hjuutilainen]

There’s https://sqwarq.com/detectx/ which would fit your needs nicely. They also recently tweeted about detecting this specific malware in question.

[sam_goody]

I never saw this program before.

Closed source, no references, and free (so how do they support themselves?)

Very nice, but why would I trust it?

[vanc_cefepime]

ClamXAV. https://www.clamxav.com/

Used to use them years back, before I jumped off MacOS. Past few years they went a subscription model for sustainability. Based on ClamAV.

[abrowne]

> Malwarebytes […] installs with root privileges, runs on boot and cannot be ever closed, despite the fact that it is only an on-demand scanner. I've written to them to request an explanation, and did not get any response.

Because they try to up-sell you their paid option, which scans automatically for you, with a 30-day trial.