Com.apple.geod.xpc Little Snitch 3

The traffic of some Apple processes isn’t shown in Little Snitch 5

This is due to a limitation in Apple’s Network Extension API, which surprisingly whitelists a number of system services like Maps, FaceTime, App Store or Software Update and therefore doesn’t report the network activity of these services to third-party application firewalls.

The use of this new API is now mandatory for third-party developers on macOS Big Sur, because Apple no longer supports the previous kernel extension based approach, which didn’t suffer from this limitation.

We’ve been investigating a solution in Little Snitch to make these whitelisted connections visible by means of alternative techniques. This solution is already available in our latest nightly build of Little Snitch 5.1.

Here's a partial list from my Little Snitch config on macOS Sierra: - com.apple.geod.xpc tried to establish a connection to gspe19.ls.apple.com on port 80 - App Store / softwareupdated uses port 80 to download updates from swcdn.apple.com - helpd uses port 80 to fetch help docs from the web. Codice: Seleziona tutto Timestamp (2): Sat Apr 04 20: DetectX Swift v1.093 macOS: Version 10.15.4 (Build 19E266) File System: apfs Temp: The thermal state is within normal limits.

There’s an ongoing discussion about this problem in various online media, and we assume that Apple will address these concerns in a future macOS update. See our blog article to learn more about this topic.

UPDATE: This issue has been resolved in macOS Big Sur 11.2. Apple has removed this whitelist completely, allowing third-party firewalls like Little Snitch to reliably monitor and filter any network traffic.

Up until macOS 11.1 the whitelist inlcudes the following macOS processes:

/System/Applications/App Store.app/Contents/MacOS/App Store
/System/Library/CoreServices/cloudpaird
/System/Library/CoreServices/mapspushd
/System/Library/CoreServices/Software Update.app/Contents/Resources/softwareupdated
/System/Library/Frameworks/Accounts.framework/Versions/A/Support/accountsd
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreTelephony.framework/Support/CommCenter
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ApplePushService.framework/apsd
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AppStoreDaemon.framework/Support/appstoreagent
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AppStoreDaemon.framework/Support/appstored
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AssetCacheServices.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/AssetCacheLocatorService.xpc/Contents/MacOS/AssetCacheLocatorService
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AssistantServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/assistantd
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AuthKit.framework/Versions/A/Support/akd
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CloudKitDaemon.framework/Support/cloudd
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CommerceKit.framework/Resources/commerced
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CommerceKit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/commerce
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreLSKD.framework/Versions/A/lskdd
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreParsec.framework/parsecd
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreSpeech.framework/corespeechd
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DistributedEvaluation.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.siri-distributed-evaluation.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.siri-distributed-evaluation
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/FamilyCircle.framework/Versions/A/Resources/familycircled
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/FamilyNotification.framework/FamilyNotification
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/GeoServices.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.geod.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.geod
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/HomeKitDaemon.framework/Support/homed
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IDS.framework/identityservicesd.app/Contents/MacOS/identityservicesd
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IDSFoundation.framework/IDSRemoteURLConnectionAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/IDSRemoteURLConnectionAgent
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IMCore.framework/imagent.app/Contents/MacOS/imagent
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IMFoundation.framework/XPCServices/IMRemoteURLConnectionAgent.xpc/Contents/MacOS/IMRemoteURLConnectionAgent
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IMTransferServices.framework/IMTransferAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/IMTransferAgent
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MapsSuggestions.framework/MapsSuggestions
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MapsSupport.framework/MapsSupport
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MediaStream.framework/MediaStream
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MusicLibrary.framework/MusicLibrary
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/PassKitCore.framework/passd
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ProtectedCloudStorage.framework/Helpers/ProtectedCloudKeySyncing
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SyncedDefaults.framework/Support/syncdefaultsd
/System/Library/TextInput/kbd
/usr/libexec/coreduetd
/usr/libexec/diagnosticd
/usr/libexec/findmydeviced
/usr/libexec/fmfd
/usr/libexec/locationd
/usr/libexec/mdmclient
/usr/libexec/mobileactivationd
/usr/libexec/mobileassetd
/usr/libexec/networkserviceproxy
/usr/libexec/rtcreportingd
/usr/libexec/secd
/usr/libexec/siriknowledged
/usr/libexec/swcd
/usr/libexec/tailspind
/usr/libexec/teslad
/usr/libexec/timed
/usr/libexec/trustd
/usr/sbin/securityd
com.apple.facetime

tinyapps.org / blog

Patrick Wardle highlighted a tweet by Maxwell ('Some Apple apps bypass some network extensions and VPN Apps. Maps for example can directly access the internet bypassing any NEFilterDataProvider or NEAppProxyProviders you have running'), sparking an extensive HN discussion on Apple's ham-fisted tactics (not unlike Google's recent behavior).

A search for 'NEFilterDataProvider' turned up David Dudok de Wit's post fingering the ContentFilterExclusionList key in /System/Library/Frameworks/NetworkExtension.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Info.plist as the culprit. The default list includes 56 Apple apps and daemons like App Store, MusicLibrary, softwareupdated, etc.:

Com.apple.geod.xpc Little Snitch