SOLVED It turns out that as of macOS 14.4 not only is the airport binary deprecated so it no longer functions and instead returns and error message, but CoreWLAN has been changed so that to retrieve SSID names your application needs Location Services permission enabling for it in Privacy & Security in System Preferences. As far as I can see this later change is not documented here at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corewlan

On older macOS versions i.e. prior to 14.4 the same code utilising CoreWLAN would produce {( <CwNetwork: 0x600001249140> [ssid=EE WiFi-X, bssid=, security=WPA2 Personal, rssi=-50, channel=<CWChannel: 0x60001240160> [channelNumber=40(5GHz), channelWidth={80MHz}], ibss=0] )} This is what the same code and the new crippled CoreWLAN in macOS 14.4 return. {( <CWNetwork: 0x6000009ac4b0> [ssid=(null), bssid=(null), security=WPA2 Personal, rssi=-53, channel=<CWChannel: 0x6000009a2570> [channelNumber=6(2GHz), channelWidth={20MHz}], ibss=0], <CWNetwork: 0x6000009ac530> [ssid=(null), bssid=(null), security=WPA2/WPA3 Personal, rssi=-73, channel=<CWChannel: 0x6000009a25a0> [channelNumber=11(2GHz), channelWidth={20MHz}], ibss=0] )} As you can see all the ssid values are not being returned. :(

My code also depended on this tool. I can say that the airport binary from macOS 14.3.1 does currently work under macOS 14.4 if you keep a copy. However knowing Apple it will highly likely be blocked at some point. In the meantime does anyone have a genuine Apple download link for the macOS 14.3.1 copy of this? Note: Apple will soon stop signing the macOS 14.3.1 installer so keeping the entire OS installer will not only be a huge file but will also cease to work. As an alternative approach does anyone have a Python script that would provide the same functionality? That is list available SSIDs with their details such as name, channel and signal strength.