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By Stephen Silver
Friday, September 07, 2018, 07:46 PT am (10:46 am ET)
Security researcher Patrick Wardle says he is one of the most popular apps on the Mac App Store "Surreptitiously exfiltrates highly sensitive user information" and is likely exporting to China.
On his website Objective-See.com, in collaboration with a Twitter account, called @ privacyis1st, which was first to the issue, Wardle lays out the case that Adware Doctor is stealing users' browser histories.
Wardle also says that he and @ privacyis1st told Apple about the issue a month ago, but that the $ 4.99 Adware Doctor app -from a mysterious developer named "Yongming Zhang" -was available in the Mac App Store early Friday. The app has since disappeared from the storefront.
Wardle first accused the app of having abused AppleScript in 2016, and of leaving fake reviews. But then he and the @ privacyis1st account demonstrate, through static and dynamic analysis, that Adware Doctor is taking its users' browser history and exfiltrating it.
The conclusion is that Apple, which has a strong role in the management of the system and has a strong role in the management of the system. And, despite Wardle having been told about Apple a month ago, the company has done nothing about it.
"First, there is more privacy in your life than in any one of your life." Wardle writes. "The fact that this application has been surprisingly exfiltrating users 'browsing history, possibly for years, is, to put it mildly, rather f # @ &' d up!"
He concludes by asking for more money.
Patrick Wardle, who is formerly working for the National Security Agency, is the founder and chief research officer of Digita Security. While he has a long history of Apple-related security work going back several years, he has recently demonstrated that he has discovered a "synthetic click" problem, also in MacOS.
Updated to reflect Adware Doctor's removal from the Mac App Store.
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