After upgrading to Sequoia, I noticed that there are 4 new volume disks on my desktop. They all have the exact same name: "Creedence11M6270.SECUREPKITRUSTSTOREASSETS_SECUREPKITRUSTSTORE_Cryptex", are all the same size/ have the same files, and are APFS format. Can I delete these files? or the duplicates and leave one? Screenshot attached.
iMac 21.5″, macOS 15.0
One of our customers has this issue too, currently in the process of troubleshooting it and so far managed to get rid of the dmg from mounting. Now in the process of figuring out what the source is.
I recommend using this process to figure out which app(s) is/are causing this
Go to your login items (launch daemons) and literally turn off everything that has a slider in the list and once you've done that reboot your Mac. You'll notice that it won't come up anymore.
After that try turning on a handfull of startup apps every time to narrow down which app(s) are causing this to come up.
This will help you find out the reason, since only 1 person is affected from our customer I have asked that person to perform these steps as he's a local admin on his Mac.
I too have this issue but there were 52 visible disks present on my screen. They’re apart of the MAC os? Or something different? Is it a glitch with the new update?
should I be concerned or is it just annoying.
No, Creedence is not spying. Follow where it is mounted and you can see that the contents is a PKI trust store (in my case dated from last July). Reasonable that this should be a cryptex as it ensures 1) that we can't modify the trust store and 2) macOS can update it without a macOS version update.
After getting online with Apple, here is all you need to do.
Open Finder.
Right click on the driive ( e.g. Creedence11M6270) and...
Select Remove from Sidebar
The drive will still be used by Apple Criptex stuff, but not annoy you. If it's on your Desktop, I don't know how to fix that.
So I had one Creedence .dmg file in my disk utility window-IT SHOULD not be there. I started up with an external drive and made all the files visible on the boot drive and external drive there by seeing the invisible Creedence .dmg in the AssetsV2 folder. I deleted the Creedence .dmg from there.
I figured if it already installed what it needed to install- no need for the .dmg file and it seemed to me as an errant remnant file. Made all the files visible again and restarted from boot drive. Everything is fine and no Creedence image file in disk utility. How and why it appeared, I have no idea. Maybe from a failed start up from an old copy of Ventura on an external drive, possibly!
I mentioned this on 1/24/25
So I had one Creedence .dmg file in my disk utility window-IT SHOULD not be there. I started up with an external drive and made all the files visible on the boot drive and external drive there by seeing the invisible Creedence .dmg in the AssetsV2 folder. I deleted the Creedence .dmg from there.
I figured if it already installed what it needed to install- no need for the .dmg file and it seemed to me as an errant remnant file. Made all the files visible again and restarted from boot drive. Everything is fine and no Creedence image file in disk utility. How and why it appeared, I have no idea. Maybe from a failed start up from an old copy of Ventura on an external drive, possibly!
Eric James: I don't think the Creedence Cryptexes are anything to do with our performance issues. If they appears in Disk Utility and sometimes in Finder, treat them as an annoyance which can be ignored. If they appear on your Desktop, that is a very much in your face annoyance.
I am using a 2019 27", and they do not cause any performance issues. Look elsewhere for performance - e.g. insufficient RAM or Fusion Drive. Failing that a clean install may help your performance issue if it is caused by some software interaction.
In the event that you decide to do a clean install (erase, install macOS (no Migration Assistant), install apps and recover files (documents, photos, etc.) from backup) please report back whether the cryptexes still get mounted.
I have the same problem with the credence cryptex showing as a container disk in disk utility I can’t unmount it because it’s being used so I can delete it either. I did go into settings and turned off everything that launches at startup. I rebooted. No change What is this disk for. Have I been hacked?
Strange, the weird APFS entry isn't seen when booted from internal SSD, Ventura 14.7.1.
Fortunately, for me, nothing appears on the desktop…
So, @Todd G. Myers, the strange cryptex volume disappeared after you’ve proceed with those steps?
I no longer have the cryptex volumes appear.
Is "Creedence Cryptex"
Spying on us?
All startup items deactivated, and it's still there
I do use an external start-up disk though
Which is also where the disk resides
Can't eject, unmount or erqase it, as it is "in use"
It seems that at about macOS Sequoia 15.1.1 and later external boot volumes might get the following disk image which annoyingly "litters" the Disk Utility list when booted to such volume (in the screenshot below the Mac was booted from an external macOS 15.2 volume that lists a snapshot):
Creedence11M6270.SECUREPKITRUSTSTOREASSETS_SECUREPKITRUSTSTORE_Cryptex
That .dmg is at (visible or in some setups invisible):
/System/Library/AssetsV2/com_apple_MobileAsset_PKITrustStore/purpose_auto/6dd55b0d06633a00de6f57ccb910a66a5ba2409a.asset/AssetData/Restore/SECUREPKITRUSTSTOREASSETS_SECUREPKITRUSTSTORE_Cryptex.dmg
It seems for some users that .dmg is somehow auto-mounted to the Desktop, sometimes multiple times. But I have not seen that behavior.
That .dmg seems to need more than 'sudo rm' if the user wants to delete it.
For example in my setup (Mac mini 2018 Intel, macOS 15.2, Carbon Copy Cloner 7.0.4):
The internal macOS 15.2 volume that is updated incrementally at every step from a cleanly installed 15.0 to 15.2 does not have that folder or .dmg. But if I use CCC 7.0.4 to make a bootable clone from it to an external volume, boot to it, then that folder and .dmg is somehow generated and visible in Disk Utility list.
On the other hand, if I use CCC to clone an existing old macOS 15.1 bootable clone disk image to a "real" volume, and boot it, then that enclosing folder and .dmg does not exist. But after updating that volume to macOS 15.2 it is generated.
Silicon Macs use the internal disk also for the initial boot sequence to external disks so maybe it is related to this issue also on Intel Macs?
I have decided to ignore this cosmetic issue.
Not just 15.2. Was in 15.1 and is still an annoyance in in 15.3
4 disks called "Creedence Cryptex" appeared on my desktop