The joys of Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client are plentiful while working remotely. However, the startup process and, subsequent warnings, are problematic.

From Technology Services’ knowledgebank, we have:

Do NOT accept the system extension “socket filter”. It is not needed for basic VPN, and will conflict with other socket filters (Mac OS 11, Mac OS 12). After installation is complete, go to Cisco folder inside Applications, and delete the application “Cisco AnyConnect Socket Filter.app” as a work around for a known MacOS Socket Filter related issue.

Following this advice leads to a panic as the client starts with a scary warning pop up message.

If we look at the Login Items:

macOS 13 - Ventura: System Settings -> General -> Login Items
Otherwise: System Settings -> Users & Groups -> Login Items

We note that Cisco AnyConnect is not registered there. So, our attention turns to launchctl that focuses on launching tasks. Checking to see if cisco is present with:

launchctl list | grep -i cisco

Reveals:

-       0   com.cisco.anyconnect.gui
1042    0   com.cisco.anyconnect.notification
1165    0   application.com.cisco.anyconnect.notification.1351771.1351776

As a result, we need to disable the launch of these cisco specific processes by unloading them. Running the following two commands disables anyconnect from starting when the computer launches and prevents the socket filter notification from being triggered.

# Prevent Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client from starting on startup
launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.cisco.anyconnect.gui.plist

# Prevent Cisco Notifications regarding the socket filter from occurring on startup
launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.cisco.anyconnect.notification.plist

Revert

If this becomes problematic, the above modifications can be reverted using:

# Prevent Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client from starting on startup
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.cisco.anyconnect.gui.plist

# Prevent Cisco Notifications regarding the socket filter from occurring on startup
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.cisco.anyconnect.notification.plist

Fin

By modifying the start up items using launchctl, we successful fixed the startup issue from installing Cisco and as well as preventing the socket filters popup.