Catalina: Can't update Olympus camera firmware even with 64-bit app

Hi,

I’m trying to update the firmware on my Olympus camera. I’m running Catalina 10.15.3 on a 16” MacBook Pro.

Olympus has replaced their earlier camera-management software with Olympus Workspace which is 64-bit, signed, and notarized, so it runs fine under Catalina. During the install process, I was prompted to open Security & Privacy in System Preferences and allow an extension from developer “Olympus Corporation” to run. I did so, and the app seems to run just fine (except for one thing…).

Within this app is the feature for updating the camera’s firmware. When I select it, it starts a helper app called Olympus Digital Camera Updater which resides in Olympus Workspace’s …/Contents/Helpers/, and when this runs, it says “The operations of the applications are limited. To use these functions, you need to display the Security & Privacy settings in the system environment settings and allow loading from 'Olympus Corporation', which is blocked.”

When I open Security & Privacy, I don’t see anything prompting me to allow “Olympus Corporation” as I did when I first installed Olympus Workspace. During that install process, I’m guessing the installer asked for this permission from macOS, and Security & Privacy had that request ready for me to grant. As I said, nothing shows up now when I run the camera helper app. The helper app does run, so it’s not a 32-bit app.

I tried to specifically grant the helper app some permissions within Security & Privacy (e.g., full disk access), but since this app is embedded within Olympus Workspace, I cannot select it when adding a new app to give permissions to. I don’t know if apps within another app inherit the permissions granted to the parent.

I tried temporarily disabling Gatekeeper using the Terminal commands (i.e., “sudo spctl --master-disable” and "…enable” when I was done), but that didn’t help either. I did confirm that Security & Privacy had the new open “Anywhere” selected for which apps sources I could run from.

The helper app does run after I dismiss the above dialog, and then it pops up another dialog saying it can’t communicate with the camera. Hence I’m wondering if there’s a low-level driver (e.g., extension) that is actually the problem. The only extension that seems related is /Library/Extensions/OlympusDSCSCSIDriver.kext, but I don’t know how to determine if it’s been authorized.

A few questions:

1. Is there a way to manually grant permission for the helper app and/or extension? I poked around some but didn’t find anything.

2. Is there a way to list all the authorized developers or see if an app and/or extension is authorized?

3. Do apps embedded within the Contents of another app inherit the Security & Privacy permissions granted the parent app?

Any other debug ideas would be welcome.

Regards, Eric