Apple granted special security entitlement to notorious MacKeeper

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12 points_qulr6 comments

Some context / explanation would be nice for someone that don't own a MAC and doesn't know what a "EndpointSecurity entitlement" is and what MacKeeper does.

MacKeeper is an aggressively sold “security” package that many/most people think of as malware - for their business practices and functionality. It used to be very hard to remove as well.

I don’t know precisely what the entitlement allows but I’m presuming it allows an app to insert itself into the network packet path to examine and possibly drop traffic. Certainly nothing I’d trust MacKeeper with.

OK I get it, it's the Norton of MacOS. Thanks.

Norton would be several steps up.

Yikes! How come Apple allows it? I thought they were super stringent about what they allow on their platforms (MacOS might be more lax from what i gather).

If it was distributed through the AppStore Apple could reject it. Otherwise Apple could revoke the developer certificate but it’d be hard to justify it since technically it’s not exactly malware and more like an aggressively marketed scam.

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