OS X fails to open quarantined files

http://images.apple.com/server/macosx/docs/LeopardSecurity_Config20080530.pdf

"Applications that download files from the Internet or receive files from external sources
(such as mail attachments) can use the Quarantine feature to provide a first line of
defense against malicious software such as Trojan horses. When an application receives
an unknown file, it adds metadata (quarantine attributes) to the file using new
functions found in Launch Services.

Files downloaded using Safari, Mail, and iChat are tagged with metadata indicating that
they are downloaded files and referring to the URL, date, and time of the download.
This metadata is propagated from archive files that are downloaded (such as ZIP or
DMG files) so that any file extracted from an archive is also tagged with the same
information. This metadata is used by the download inspector to prevent dangerous
file types from being opened unexpectedly."

Here is a possible solution...



-mj

portsmouth wrote:
Hi,

Since doing a fresh install of snow leopard on release date I have had several problems with the OS X I have googled but can't seem to find any reference to this issue;

When I first boot into OS X everything works fine and it stays that way for hours or days, then all of a sudden files with the "com.apple.quarantine" attribute fail to launch; if I try to run an app with the flag then it hangs and if I try to open a PDF for example, then preview will fail to open it and hang.

If I kill the process, remove the com.apple.quarantine attribute with xattr then the file works fine, however this is clearly inconvienient. The only way I can fix the issue is to reboot my system when it occurs.

I haven't seen quite the problem you describe where apps actually hang or there is an issue opening a single file but there is definitely an issue with quarantined files in snow leopard. the following bug is easily reproducible. if you select several image files or pdfs some of which are quarantined and double-click the results will be very unpredictable. Preview may not open some of the files and instead of one window it may open several. this bug has been reported to apple.

I'm having the exact same problem and it occured both after an upgrade from Leopard and a clean install.
At first, everything works but after a few hours, each time an application tries to open a quarantined file, it freezes.
I can kill it, remove the flag and relaunch it but that's obviously a pain in the ***.
I've added the Applescript to automatically remove the quarantine flag in my Download directory and it works but as it is called after the application is automatically launched, I have a freeze anyway.

Anybody reported this as a bug?

I reported it just after posting my previous message. What response did you had? An automated one saying your problem was in the system or something more useful?

I hope 10.6.2 will solve this.