“The discoveries of the malware calls into question the safety of apps available from the Mac App Store, and Apple’s ability to make sure they are safe before making them available to purchase or download,” Owen reports. Cleaner, which again collected data from the user’s Mac and sent it to a specific address.” The same data was collected and exfiltrated, but with the addition of a file detailing metadata of every application installed on the Mac,” Owen reports. Antivirus, discovered through Open Any Files, performs similar data collection but with limitations, restricted by macOS.
“While the app was reported to Apple in December 2017, it is still available to download from the Mac App Store.” Aside from the extra affiliate-based behavior, the app was also found to have similar characteristics to Adware Doctor, in acquiring the browsing and search history of Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, as well as the App Store,” Owen reports. “A second app, Open Any Files, takes over a system’s ability to handle documents that are not associated with an existing app, using the opportunity to advertise other apps that supposedly could open files. “The biggest app of the list is Adware Doctor, which topped the chart for paid utilities in the Mac App Store, before being removed after the reports about it first emerged on Friday.” We can only advice you to be vigilant and only download apps from companies you’d trust and from which you know that they take privacy very seriously.“A number of apps in the Mac App Store have been found to be stealing data from its users, acquiring sensitive information and sending it to the developer, including one app which was the top paid utility available in the store before its removal,” Malcolm Owen reports for AppleInsider. While Windows users are always prepared for something like this to happen, have installed Antivirus tools, and are generally more suspicious, this is something that might not come as natural to their Mac counterparts.
Those exceptions are where it gets hairy.
Apple is secure, yes, but there are of course always exceptions. That doesn’t mean you should relax and be as careless as before. Cleaner have been removed from the Apple App store. Apps removed from the app storeĪs so often there are good news, too: Dr. That’s a lot of data from a lot of users.
Unarchiver” is one of the top 15 most popular free app in the US Mac App Store. That’s a lot of information that most users would probably not be comfortable sharing with anyone.
All your data are belong to usĪccording to 9to5mac they collect and upload a lot of data to the company’s server, including the full browser history for Safari, Google Chrome, and Firefox, separate files specifically dedicated to storing the user’s recent Google searches on the same browsers and a file containing a complete list of all apps installed on the system, including information about where they were downloaded from, whether they are 64-bit compatible and their code signature. They perform their tasks well enough but also do other work in the background – a lot more than you’d be comfortable with actually. While the first one is supposed to unzip files, the second one cleans up your Mac and iPhones. Claims like that make sure that users will be more open to trust “shady” apps and not question what they are doing too much.
According to they come from a developer that claims to be a rather big popular security company. It seems like a couple of them have recently slipped trough though. So far Apple has done a very fine job when it comes to keeping out malicious apps. Macs: Secure but not fool proofedĪpple claims to review each app before it enters their app store, which is one of the reasons why iPhones and Macs are touted as very secure. If you are still skeptical recent events should help convincing you: Some pretty popular apps where siphoning off and afterwards sharing users’ data.
Sadly that’s just not true anymore and everyone believing blindly in this tale is at a bigger risk than any PC user. Macs – a lot of people still believe in the myth that they are safe since there is no malware for the OS of their choice.