The app was removed from the store two years ago after MalwareBytes complained, and then it reappeared under Adware Doctor and becomes the Mac Store top paid utility-thanks to fake reviews.Īpple Ignored Researcher's Report For 1 Month

What's more? Adware Doctor originally was named 'Adware Medic,' which was clearly designed to mimic a different AdwareMedic app acquired and rebranded by MalwareBytes in 2015, Thomas Reed of MalwareBytes noted. So yes will be able to detect and clean adware, but also collect and exfiltrate any user file, it so chooses!'Īccording to the technical process outlined in Wardle's post, Adware Doctor escapes Apple's app sandbox and calls processes tied to popular web browsers including Safari, Chrome and Firefox, and then compresses history data into a ZIP archive, which is then uploaded to the server via a call to the sendPostRequestWithSuffix method for exfiltration. 'However, once the user has clicked Allow since Adware Doctor requested permission to the user's home directory, it will have carte blanche access to all the user's files.

'Now, an anti-malware or anti-adware tool is going to need legitimate access to user's files and directories-for example, to scan them for malicious code,' Wardle explains. To do this, Adware Doctor bypasses Apple Mac App Store sandbox restrictions to be able to access, copy and upload user files from the Mac computer it is installed on. According to Wardle, Adware Doctor collects sensitive users' data-primarily any website you've visited or searched for-from all the popular web browsers including Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, and then sends that data to Chinese server at run by the app's makers.

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