When an app attempts to access a file in the Documents folder, macOS will show an alert like this: As an example, your Documents folder is one that could easily contain sensitive information, so on modern versions of macOS, apps must be given permission by the user in order to access files there.

Transparency, Consent, and Control, aka TCC, is a technology in macOS that prevents apps from accessing data that may be sensitive without explicit user consent. Specifically, it seemed to be a bug in Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC).

As we collectively dug into the problem, it quickly became apparent that the bug had to be in macOS. In no time, I had reports back from multiple people, all reporting exactly the same problems with their own products.

Some aspects of the problem were starting to seem like macOS bugs, though, so I reached out to friends at other companies. We realized that the problem was far worse, and more widespread, than we'd initially thought. Then reports started coming in from people using older versions of our software. Initially, we thought this was a flaw in our Malwarebytes 4.17 beta for Mac, which we had released the same day. Malwarebytes software reported that it needed Full Disk Access - a special permission users can grant to programs that need it-yet reports said that Full Disk Access was already turned on. Not long after, we began to receive reports from customers seeing that their real-time protection had turned off, and they were unable to turn it back on again. On Monday, October 24, Apple released macOS Ventura, a major new update to the Macintosh operating system.

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