That said, they are still files and weird stuff can happen. It shouldn’t, but it can.
It is entirely possible a third party app is responsible for this, just as much as it’s possible it’s a bug in the OS.
If you read any of the links you supplied, you’ll see how easy it is to delete the file. This being the case, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that something else damaged the file.
Sophos had no reason to quarantine the critical file it did that Tableau used. I’ll happily bitch about Tableau till the cows come home, but this was absolutely not one of them.
Again - we were prepared to 100% blame Tableau. We had no idea that the issue was a missing file and we’d have never ever discovered it unless the Security Manager had pinged me.
So, it’s very easy to blame the broken thing from being broken. But sometimes it’s not the broken things fault.
No one should be expected to cover every last single potential issue that can affect something - it’s a fools errand. You do the best you can and move on.
If the issue here is, from what it sounds like, a corruption plist then the solution is to apparently delete it and let the OS heal itself after.