Patrick Wardle, a former NSA hacker and currently a lead researcher at Digita Security, revealed that Adware Doctor steals users' browser history from the most popular web browsers, as well as recent App Store searches.
The first to detect the suspicious behavior of Adware Doctor Spyware was a security researcher. He also uploaded a video to YouTube on August 10th, detailing the exact process that Adware Doctor used to grab and upload a user's browsing history.
In his blog post, Patrick Wardle describes how the data theft occurs. Adware Doctor: Antimalware & Ad ends up collecting your data, quickly transferring everything to a history.zip file, and uploading it along with a JSON blob of all the downloaded software on your Mac to a Chinese server for export.
To do this, Adware Doctor is able to bypass Mac App Store access restrictions by copying and uploading users' files from the Mac on which it is installed.
It's hard to understand how an app that breaks a whole bunch of rules from Apple's App Store Guidelines can be approved and published on the Mac App Store and then steal private data from its users.
Following Wardle's report, Apple's App Store team stated that "We have forwarded your feedback to the appropriate team. A developer from that team will investigate the issue and follow up as necessary."
Adware Doctor: Antimalware & Ad is currently still available through the Apple App Store, despite Patrick Wardle reporting the issue back in August. The app is the fifth-highest-rated app on the Mac App Store and costs $4.99.
Below you can see a video that Wardle has published to show how the Adware Doctor app steals browsing history from the Mac on which it is installed.
