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MacKeeper Discloses 13 Million Mac Users' Details With Poor Hash Protection (mackeeper.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the of-barn-doors-and-horses dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Mac security software suite MacKeeper is recovering after a hack leaked millions of users' personal information. Kromtech, the software developer, confirmed that it had received notice of the hack yesterday, discovering a hole in its security which was exposing customer usernames, email addresses and other personal data for as much as 13 million users. The hole was patched within a matter of hours after security researcher Chris Vickery had published details of the error over the weekend. Vickery, who had been unfamiliar with both MacKeeper and Kromtech, explained that he had discovered the security fault by browsing the connected devices search engine Shodan.io.

4 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. So MacKeeper is actually real?!? by pipedwho · · Score: 4, Insightful

    With the amount of "MacKeeper" subterfuge style pop-up ads that appear all over the place, I've always assumed that it was a scam. Kind of like the random calls you get from India saying your Windows machine has a virus - even if you don't use Windows.

  2. Bad summary, no hack involved by PRMan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    FTA:

    ‘The data was/is publicly available. No exploits or vulnerabilities involved. They published it to the open web with no attempt at protection,’ Vickery wrote in a Reddit post. He noted that Kromtech was alerted and was able to quickly patch the vulnerability.

    There was no need for a hack because it was published to the open web!

    --
    Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
  3. Article Correction by redback · · Score: 3, Insightful

    First line should read

    Mac malware vendor Mackeeper

  4. Re:Big news by ruir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Gullible in an understatement. Buying something that spams you opening their website while opening other pages, or with adverts get your Mac "faster" is so stupid that beggars belief. mackeeper site used to be pinnned to 127.0.0.1 in my hosts file, and nowadays is black holed in my DNS server.