[bdash]

What's most amusing is that in the most recent blog post (https://eclecticlight.co/2025/04/30/why-some-apps-sometimes-...), the handful of log statements that serve as the source of the claim in fact confirm that it is syspolicyd performing a malware scan that is responsible for the delay during launch.

11.012004 com.apple.syspolicy.exec Recording cache miss for <private>

20.898736 AppleSystemPolicy Waking up reference: 174

The first of the two messages is from `syspolicyd` and is reporting that it has no cached malware scan result for a file it was asked to scan. The malware scan is triggered by an up-call within the AppleSystemPolicy kernel extension during a MACF hook (`proc_notify_exec_complete`, `file_check_library_validation`, or `file_check_mmap`) if the kext doesn’t have a cached malware scan result for the vnode of the file in question.

The second log message is from the AppleSystemPolicy kernel extension when it receives the result of the malware scan and permits the process to resume execution.

It's a little puzzling that the original analysis is published based on speculation, without any real attempt at verifying that the data supports their hypothesis. Looking at `top` or Activity Monitor during the slow launch would show which process is performing work. A spindump captured during the slow launch would reveal what work it is doing. The system log store captures the process and subsystem that logged any given message. A few minutes in Binary Ninja or Hopper gives you a rough idea of what the code that emits the log is doing.

[lapcat]

Oakley's brain just seems to be stuck in a loop of misunderstanding and mistaken assumptions. He gave the same bizarre response to me that he gave to you:

"The only feature in macOS that I know of that matches that description is what Apple terms XProtect, and there are only two (in Sequoia, previously one) sets of Yara rules in macOS. Now if I’m missing something, please tell me where those other Yara rules are." https://eclecticlight.co/2025/04/22/why-some-apps-launch-ver...

"Well, the only Yara rules that I know of in macOS are those in the XProtect bundle. Do you know of any others?" https://eclecticlight.co/2025/04/30/why-some-apps-sometimes-...