Malicious site pearcleaner.com impersonating this project (confirmed malware, 12/92 on VirusTotal)
Nobody has claimed this yet.
Assessment
- Difficulty
- 2/5
- Estimated time
- 1-3 hours
- Newbie friendliness
- 78/100
- Issue type
- Documentation
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Activity status
- Active
- Tech stack
- git, github
- Domain
- documentation, security
Research direction
Start by reading the README sections that describe installation and official download sources. Confirm the official GitHub Releases and Homebrew cask references from the issue, then add a clear warning about pearcleaner.com and the trusted sources. Done means the warning is visible where users choose an installation method and the existing instructions remain accurate.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Description
Heads up: pearcleaner.com is not affiliated with this project and is
distributing macOS malware under the Pearcleaner name. It ranks well in
search results and mimics the README (Homebrew / git clone / DMG tabs), so
users are landing there instead of GitHub.
I got hit this morning (2026-07-30, 07:22 CEST). The installer never installs
Pearcleaner — it drops a payload and deletes itself.
[same technical detail as above]
12/92 engines on VirusTotal flag the domain. Reported to Google Safe Browsing.
Might be worth a warning in the README pointing to the only official sources
(GitHub Releases / brew install --cask pearcleaner), since the fake site
borrows your project's structure closely enough to be convincing.
- Dominant language
- Swift
- Stars
- 14.7k
- Forks
- 376
- PR merge metrics
- No merged PRs in 30d
Contributor guide
No contributing guide indexed for this repository
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
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