Vulnerable or not? macOS reinstall with the recovery mode via Internet

[Joe's kitchen]

I had some troubles with my Mac applications, so I decided to reinstall macOS Sequoia.

I tried the macOS reinstall with the recovery mode via Internet. Actually, it took more than five or six hours and the progress bar seemed not working, so I finally gave up and canceled the reinstall.

Anyway, I'm now wondering while you are reinstalling your Mac with the recovery mode via Internet, would it be vulnerable in any ways?

In normal time, I use third party firewall/antivirus applications on my Mac, so this should be considered safe in general, but during the reinstall process, I presume macOS forcing those applications to suspend working, although it connects to Apple's server or somewhere on the Internet for many hours.

Would it be potentially vulnerable that macOS Sequoia allow the unwanted intenet transmission (both outbound and inbound) while firewall is dead? Would it my personal data on Mac be still protected?

I believe Apple is taking some safety measures but how this reinstall on recovery mode really work?

 

[Fishrrman]

How much free space do you have on your internal drive?
Modern OS installs seem to require LOTS of free space... 50+gb (really).

 

[Joe's kitchen]

Thanks for the suggestion. I think I have enough space for this reinstall and I think I can solve this issue.

How about the possible vulnerability? With my third-party firewall, I deny outbound transmissions for the most of applications, including many macOS native ones, making sure my personal documents (data) is going somewhere (including Apple servers) I don't want.

My concern is, during the reinstall process where those third party applications are probably disabled, what happens to the firewall functions and those personal data behind the wall?