Just to add some clarification: Apps that run their helper tools via NSTask seem not be affected. At least my app Find Any File remains able to launch its "searchfs" helper this way, which in turn searches entire volumes, once the main app has gotten FDA, even in 11.4.
I suspect that the issue is only with helpers that get run outside of the main app's runtime, e.g. as launchd service, Login Item etc.
This change was apparently implemented to deal with CVE-2021-30713: (see https://mjtsai.com/blog/2021/06/01/macos-11-4-breaks-full-disk-access-for-helper-tools/#comment-3465367). But in a wrong way: Instead of making sure that embedded helpers are tested to belong to the main app, i.e. have the same codesign Team ID, it simply denies them FDA altogether if they're launched not directly by the main app, it seems. Looks like a hasty fix that was not well thought through. And bug reports about it then being ignored as well. Scary.
Topic:
App & System Services
SubTopic:
Core OS
Tags: