Cybersecurity researchers say a forgotten updater associated with Time4Popcorn—an unofficial “Popcorn Time” application—left as many as 350,000 Macs vulnerable to malicious code execution. Eye Research reports the updater could be manipulated to run harmful software with full permissions, because it downloaded updates without verifying digital signatures and could use unsecured connections.
The risk persists even for people who stopped using Popcorn Time, because a small update-checking component may continue running on Mac start-up. Researchers also describe complications from abandonment: updater-related web addresses were set to expire, and they took steps to disable the vulnerable component using the updater itself. Eye Research says it distributed more than two million updates and later ended the operation, while advising affected users to uninstall the app because other security issues may remain.
Across outlets, the core technical warning and the affected scale (roughly 250,000–350,000 Macs) are consistent. Differences mainly concern emphasis: NDTV foregrounds the updater’s flaws and the multi-platform update effort, while MacRumors and AppleInsider highlight the updater continuing to run long after installation and the abandoned infrastructure risk.
