Ever since upgrading to the latest beta this morning, I have been bugged numerous times to enter my password for "Google Earth Helper" to do something. I have never seen this before, and in fact I do not have the Google Earth application installed.
Is this something integrated into macOS now?
I was getting this too, I thought it was some bs, so I just put in some random keys to see if it was fake. It did go away, it wanted the real thing. I could not find anything about phising so I put in the real deal, ran a scan, all is fine. But I do have GooEarth installed.
Same here, except I'm not running a beta but rather the regular release of Mac OS X 10.11.6. My only recent software upgrade was to Firefox 48.0.1 yesterday. I also don't have the Google Earth application installed (though there may be a very old copy of the mobile app among my iPhone backups). A very authentic-looking pop-up window reports "Google Earth Update Helper wants to make changes. Type your password to allow this." This window has two boxes, one for Username (with my admin user name autofilled) and one for Password. Seems phishy to me.
PS: When the pop-up next appeared I checked Activity Monitor and found the following process listed: "Google Software Update". Seems like this is the offending party, and has been around for some time: http://applehelpwriter.com/2014/07/13/how-to-remove-googles-secret-update-software-from-your-mac/
Looks like the timing with the new beta is just a coicidence, but if anyone is seeing this I recommend doing some Googling because this may actually be that rarest of breeds, a Mac virus in the wild: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/62vlaxQ8rh4
People on Apple Support Communities say it is a (now fixed) Google bug: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7642790
