>>Turned out he installed an Adobe Acrobat Reader update without un-checking the default opted-in extra garbage:
FWIW I installed Adobe Acrobat Reader yesterday. During the excessively verbose install there is one attempt to install a McAfee product that needs to be unchecked.
This attack sounds like the fallout from one of the download sites that requires you to install a small "downloader" that comes with all sorts of junk.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1