If you installed Popcorn Time on a Mac years ago, part of the app may still be running, and it may have left your Mac open to attack.
Security firm Eye Research has detailed how Time4Popcorn – an unofficial version of the once-popular movie streaming app – left behind a small update checker that scanned for updates every time the Mac started, even for people who hadn't opened the app in years. The checker basically trusted whatever it downloaded, and gave it full permission to change anything on the Mac.
What's worse is that Time4Popcorn's developers long abandoned the project, so the website addresses the helper contacted were expiring. That meant anyone who took over one of the addresses could use it to install harmful software on affected machines. Fortunately, Eye Research says it found no evidence that criminals had done so.
Eye Research said it took control of an abandoned address used by the update checker, and it estimates that 250,000 to 350,000 Macs were affected. With no developer left to issue a fix, the researchers had to use the checker itself to disable it on more than a million Macs and Windows PCs. It then handed the addresses to the Shadowserver Foundation, a nonprofit cybersecurity group.
Even so, this fix doesn't address other vulnerabilities in Time4Popcorn, and some updated addresses remain outside the researchers' control. For that reason, if you're still running that version, the researchers' advice is simple: uninstall it. Time4Popcorn was one of several unofficial versions of Popcorn Time, and it was actually distributed under the Popcorn Time name, so users may not know whether the copy they installed is the affected one. For all the details, check out the Eye Research report.
