Usually when I boot up my Mac, 2 entries called “launchd” show up in the Firewall list. Usually one is under Listening, but the other one is quite confusing.
It usually shows up only in the “Services & Ports” section under the Search For heading on the left display. Its Status column has no word (neither Listening nor Connected; its just blank) and the circle in that column (which is normally green or amber to show if its Connected or Listening) is the color of one of the entries next to it, and sometimes changes if the list is sorted differently (because the entry order changes).
Sometimes it will appear in the “Into my Mac” section, which worries me.
I exported the connections the most recent time it did this and saw:
Connections in to my Mac
Date Application Remote IP Local IP Port Traffic in Traffic out
3:24:28 PM launchd (null) 0.0.0.0 138 214 bytes
Much more rarely, some mDNSResponder entries will have the same behavior, though I normally reboot immediately when I see that, so I don’t know if they ever show up in the Into my Mac section.
Can anyone explain any of this? It would be greatly appreciated!
Note: The Firewall I use is from the Norton software that is provided by Comcast.