Possible imposter app? buhobarx - https://www.drbuho.com/buhobarx

[luckman212]

I saw this new app appear in Homebrew today:

https://www.drbuho.com/buhobarx

I downloaded it (but did not install or run it!) and inspected some of the contents. Looking at the info and screenshots it looks very suspiciously like an Ice/Thaw spinoff. Also some of the files in the app bundle are almost identical to Thaw. Which, by itself is not a crime since this is open source, but there should be some attribution if that's true.

Anyone got more info on this?

[stonerl]

I hope you have a firewall like little snitch installed. This app is data miner and transmits every app and mouse movement. @diazdesandi already looked into that.

But I might do a disassembly of that app, because the same allegations have been brought up in the Ice repo.

If this app is indeed using Thaw/Ice code then they need to make this code publicly available, since Ice and Thaw are GPL3 licensed.

[stonerl]

Okay I opened it with Hopper Disassembler. This is an Ice/Thaw rip-off. They use the same structs and vars and only added some slight modifications on top of it.

Just as an example:

@p-linnane can we get this removed from homebrew and make sure it is not added again? If you need more details let me know.

[p-linnane]

Hey Toni, thanks for the ping. Looks like some of our other maintainers took care of this already. You've got a lot of happy Homebrew maintainers as users, so shout if you ever need anything!

[stonerl]

Thanks allot 🙏

[stonerl]

I requested a removal from homebrew: Homebrew/homebrew-cask#262076

[stonerl]

Just for the record:

[BillChirico]

Thank you so much for reporting this!

[stonerl]

Quick update on the issue. The company behind bespoke app was quite cooperative. The app has been removed from their website. Thanks again @luckman212 for reporting this.