Fixing repetitive software firewall prompts in OSX

Sometimes the OS X software firewall gets stuck in a loop and will continuously prompt to allow network access for an application.

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I've seen this happen a couple of times with iTunes. Though it can happen with any application. A common cause is changing icons of system applications.

The fix is pretty easy though. First check if the application's code signature is valid and if not, why:

% codesign -vvv /Applications/iTunes.app # or the problem application
/Applications/iTunes.app: a sealed resource is missing or invalid
/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/DevicePrefsNotes.nib/objects.xib: resource added
/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/MobilePhonePrefs.nib/objects.xib: resource added
/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/PartyShuffleSettings.nib/objects.xib: resource added
/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/UniversalAccess.nib/objects.xib: resource added

We see it fails the signing and there are some extraneous objetcs.xib files. The error indicates these files weren't included in the original signing of the application, they should be safe to delete. Even if we break the application, we can always reinstall after cleaning up.

After deleting each of the offending files we get a very different output:

% codesign -vvv /Applications/iTunes.app
/Applications/iTunes.app: valid on disk
/Applications/iTunes.app: satisfies its Designated Requirement

No more prompting!