I’m posting this as a mystery because I’ve lost much of my motivation to reverse engineer macOS. That’s no longer my job, since I left Rogue Amoeba Software [checks watch] nine years ago, and my main product StopTheMadness Pro—which by the way is on sale!—is a web browser extension, so nowadays I’m more likely to spend my time reverse engineering websites. I think the career progression was natural: in both cases, my code is injected into someone else’s app. Anyway, another reason I lost my motivation was that macOS Big Sur moved all of the system libraries into the dyld shared cache, which introduced an inconvenient (for me) level of indirection. Also, Apple has gone crazy introducing omnipresent XPC (an acronym for cross-process communication?) services, which are difficult to debug.
Whenever I launch Feedback Assistant app (/System), it triggers IMTransferAgent app (/System) internet connection attempts, which I see in Little Snitch (also currently on sale!).
As the Little Snitch alert says, “Instant Messaging Transfer Agent is a macOS system process and responsible for sending and receiving files transferred using the Messages app.”
The question is, how in the world are Messages app and iMessage related to Feedback Assistant?
Further Little Snitch alerts show that the connections are for iCloud. The connection to Google is likely because iCloud is known to use Google Cloud for storage.
Nonetheless, I’ve disabled Messages in iCloud, for privacy, so Messages app itself isn’t using iCloud. Why, then, is Feedback Assistant using it?
I discovered this little gem in the IMTransferAgent app entitlements:
codesign --display --entitlements - /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IMTransferServices.framework/IMTransferAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/IMTransferAgent [String] IMTransferAgent
[Key] com.apple.private.appleaccount.app-hidden-from-icloud-settings
[Value]
[Bool] trueIn other words, Apple has exempted IMTransferAgent from appearing in the iCloud section of System Settings, so you can’t see whether it’s using iCloud or turn off that usage.
The Feedback Assistant behavior remains a mystery to me. If you have an answer to the mystery, please let me know. (And if you have an idle guess, please don’t let me know.)