Remove Advanced Mac Cleaner Virus

admin

Advanced Mac Cleaner is a program that can fix, clean and make your Mac run fast. So it’s like all-around utility tool for Mac computers. However, there are tons of negative reviews of this application online and most of them are regarding the way this application is distributed. For those reasons, we categorise Advanced Mac Cleaner as a PUP (potentially unwanted program).

Jul 26, 2019  Help To Delete Advanced Mac Cleaner Virus From Mac Advanced Mac Cleaner Removal Tool Advanced Mac Cleaner is a harmful Trojan infection which can replicate itself and hides its existence under the deep files.

Advanced Mac Cleaner PUP quicklinksNote: Combo Cleaner trial provides detection of parasites and assists in their removal for free. You can remove detected files, processes and registry entries yourself or purchase a full version.
If Combo Cleaner fails to detect parasite, ask a question in comments and provide as much detail as possible or try scaning with other tools.

User “debwilson” on official Apple discussions forum is asking a question What is advanced mac cleaner, because it was automatically installed on their Mac (without their approval), reports 5000 various issues and asks to pay $34 to solve them all. The question (and it wasn’t the only such question) attained a lot of attention and answers – most of them were correct. It is a PU that gets installed alongside various malware or fake and intrusive pop-up ads. It can cause a lot of problems, since features of this application are not really useful and it can be difficult to get rid of.

Deceptive methods of Advanced Mac Cleaner

Advanced Mac Cleaner is very similar to various PCVARK programs, like Smart Mac Booster, Mac Heal Pro, My Mac Speedup — they’re all basically the same, actually: they scan your Mac and display errors and problems in an effort to get you to pay for a repair. Some of the problems that Advanced Mac Cleaner detects may be real, but others are misleading (harmless files being shown as “issues”) and even false.

While this software might not be the worst, its distribution methods are strange and unfair, to say the least. We have encountered such an attempt to sell this software ourselves, and it wasn’t pleasant. Download mac os 10.12.

There are some websites that monetise their traffic by displaying intrusive and often misleading advertisements. That’s the main distribution funnel for this infection. Let’s say you click on some result in Google results page that looks totally legitimate. Instead of that website, you are taken to a full-window notification, that says your Mac is facing some serious problems that have to be solved right now.

This message claims that you have infection on your Mac which came from a website you visited earlier. It also displays some of your personal information – IP address, internet connection provider, and even your location, which is not really an appropriate thing to do. In case you fall for this trick and follow the steps displayed on the screen, your computer will be “scanned” right on that website.

The scan is fake — a website can’t scan your computer unless you allow it to do that explicitly. Other fake threat detection alerts include Advancemactools.live, Errx049.icu, (4) viruses, and others. Such online alerts are used to trick people to download and install software that they don’t need, usually rogue applications and potentially unwanted programs like Advanced Mac Cleaner.

At the end of the “scanning” process, you will be redirected to the website of Advanced Mac Cleaner at advancedmaccleaner.com. The pop-up message is displayed on url reward8324.share1-dc21-storage6.top. Please notice that this url can display other offers as well (fake giveaways, tech support scams, pshishing pages) and Advanced Mac Cleaner can be promoted by other url’s as well.

That is definitely not the only way this unwanted program is distributed. You can also bump into advertisement that says you have visited a porn site and your Mac needs to be fixed, as it can be seen in the image below:

Scarily, Advanced Mac Cleaner might even cause your Mac to show false security warnings that lead to even more malware.

Removal of Advanced Mac Cleaner

If the Advanced Mac Cleaner unwanted program somehow managed to sneak into your Mac or you have installed it yourself but want to get rid of it – following steps should be taken:

  • Quit the Advanced Mac Cleaner application;
  • Find it in the applications folder and drag to the trash bin’
  • Use search and find these files associated to AMC, then remove them:
    /Library/Application Support/amc/
    ~/Library/Advanced Mac Cleaner/
    ~/Library/hlpramc/
    ~/Library/Application Support/Advanced Mac Cleaner/
    ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.pcv.hlpramc.plist
    ~/Library/Logs/helperamc.log
    ~/Library/Preferences/com.PCvark.Advanced-Mac-Cleaner.plist

Also, we would highly recommend to scan your Mac with reliable anti-malware application, such as Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for Mac.

Automatic Malware removal tools

We might be affiliated with some of these programs. Full information is available in disclosure

Manual removal

Remove Advanced Mac Cleaner Virus

Important Note: Although it is possible to manually remove Advanced Mac Cleaner, such activity can permanently damage your system if any mistakes are made in the process, as advanced spyware parasites are able to automatically repair themselves if not completely removed. Thus, manual spyware removal is recommended for experienced users only, such as IT specialists or highly qualified system administrators. For other users, we recommend using Combo Cleaner or other tools found on 2-viruses.com.

About the author

Our marketing department called the IT department today and was seeing a big dialog box open about 'Mac Ads Cleaner' that had been installed on their MacOS systems. We had no idea at all how it got there. We tell them to try to quit it, removed it from autostart, and deleted the app out of the Applications folder. But the thing kept appearing again and again.Removing its stuff from the Library did not help either because another pop-up box appeared asking us to register Mac Ads Cleaner.

But our talented Steve figured out how to get rid of it.

Quick Fix

Restart into Safe Mode

Force quit the processes (Cmd+Option+Esc):

Advanced Password Manager

Mac Ads Cleaner

Malware Crusher

Unpollute My Mac

Hold the shift key when rebooting until apple icon appears.

Remove the files

Run the following

find / -iname com.techy* -exec rm -rf {} ;

Cleaner find / -iname hlpradc -exec rm -rf {} ;

find / -iname adscleaner -exec rm -rf {} ;

find / -iname helperamc -exec rm -rf {} ;

find / -iname ummhlpr -exec rm -rf {} ;

find / -iname amphelper -exec rm -rf {} ;

Details

Process Architecture

Creates per user daemons. So, there will be pieces in these locations:

~/Library/LaunchAgents

/Library/LaunchAgents

/Library/LaunchDaemons

There are files such as com.techyutils.ummhlpr.plist

com.techyutils.mchlpr.plist

Some of them may even have root ownership. Dont let that fool you.

Inspecting those files, the following suspicious items are found:

com.adscleaner.hlpradc.plist -> ~/Library/Application Support/adc/hlpradc.app/Contents/MacOS/hlpradc

com.mackeeper.MacKeeper.Helper.plist -> /Applications/MacKeeper.app/Contents/Services/MacKeeper Helper.app/Contents/MacOS/MacKeeper Helper

com.pcv.hlpramcn.plist

~/Library/Application Support/amc/helperamc.app/Contents/MacOS/helperamc

com.pcvark.APMHelper

~/Library/Application Support/apm/APMHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/APMHelper

com.techyutils.mchlpr.plist

~/Library/Application Support/MCR/mchlpr.app/Contents/MacOS/mchlpr

com.techyutils.ummhlpr.plist

~/Library/Application Support/umm/ummhlpr.app/Contents/MacOS/ummhlprGo ahead and remove the files.

File Locations

Here is a sample cross referencing the places that have been affected:

find / -iname mchlpr.app

~/Library/Application Support/MCR/mchlpr.app

/Applications/Malware Crusher.app/Contents/Resources/mchlpr.app

find / -iname com.techyutils*

/Applications/Malware Crusher.app/Contents/Resources/com.techyutils.mchlpr.plist

/Applications/Unpollute My Mac.app/Contents/Resources/com.techyutils.ummhlpr.plist

~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist/com.apple.LSSharedFileList.ApplicationRecentDocuments/com.techyutils.mac-ads-cleaner.sfl

/Library/Application Support/MCR/com.techyutils.mchlpr.plist

/Library/Application Support/umm/com.techyutils.ummhlpr.plist

~/Library/Caches/com.techyutils.Mac-Ads-Cleaner

~/Library/Caches/com.techyutils.Malware-Crusher

~/Library/Caches/com.techyutils.mchlpr

~/Library/Caches/com.techyutils.ummhlpr

~/Library/Cookies/com.techyutils.Mac-Ads-Cleaner.binarycookies

~/Library/Cookies/com.techyutils.Malware-Crusher.binarycookies

~/Library/Preferences/com.techyutils.Mac-Ads-Cleaner.plist

~/Library/Preferences/com.techyutils.Malware-Crusher.plist

~/Library/Preferences/com.techyutils.mchlpr.plist

~/Library/Preferences/com.techyutils.ummhlpr.plist

~/Library/Saved Application State/com.techyutils.Mac-Ads-Cleaner.savedState

~/Library/Saved Application State/com.techyutils.Malware-Crusher.savedState find / -iname ummhlp*

~/Library/Logs/ummhlpr.log

~/Library/Application Support/umm/ummhlpr.app

~/Library/Application Support/umm/ummhlpr.app/Contents/MacOS/ummhlpr

/Applications/Unpollute My Mac.app/Contents/Resources/ummhlpr.app

/Applications/Unpollute My Mac.app/Contents/Resources/ummhlpr.app/Contents/MacOS/ummhlpr

~/Library/Application Support>sudo find / -iname prmpsc*

/Applications/Unpollute My Mac.app/Contents/Resources/prmpsc.plist

~/Library/Application Support/Unpollute My Mac/prmpsc.plist

~/Library/Application Support>sudo find / -iname settpsc*

/Applications/Unpollute My Mac.app/Contents/Resources/settpsc.plist

~/Library/Application Support/Unpollute My Mac/settpsc.plist

~/Library/Application Support>sudo find / -iname hlpradc*

/Applications/Mac Ads Cleaner.app/Contents/Resources/hlpradc.app

/Applications/Mac Ads Cleaner.app/Contents/Resources/hlpradc.app/Contents/MacOS/hlpradc

~/Library/Application Support/adc/hlpradc.app

~/Library/Application Support/adc/hlpradc.app/Contents/MacOS/hlpradc

~/Library/hlpradc

~/Library/Logs/hlpradc.log

~/Library/Application Support>sudo find / -iname com.ads*

/Applications/Mac Ads Cleaner.app/Contents/Resources/com.adscleaner.hlpradc.plist

~/Library/Application Support/adc/com.adscleaner.hlpradc.plist

Remove Advanced Mac Cleaner Virus From Mac Os

~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist/com.apple.LSSharedFileList.ApplicationRecentDocuments/com.adscleaner.hlpradc.sfl

~/Library/Caches/com.adscleaner.hlpradc

~/Library/Preferences/com.adscleaner.hlpradc.plist ~/Library/Application Support>sudo find / -iname com.pcva*

/Applications/Advanced Password Manager.app/Contents/Resources/com.pcvark.APMHelper.plist

/private/var/db/receipts/com.pcvark.advancedPasswordManagerUpdate.Root.pkg.bom

/private/var/db/receipts/com.pcvark.advancedPasswordManagerUpdate.Root.pkg.plist

~/Library/Application Support>sudo find / -iname apmhelper*

/Applications/Advanced Password Manager.app/Contents/Resources/APMHelper.app

/Applications/Advanced Password Manager.app/Contents/Resources/APMHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/APMHelper

~/Library/Application Support/apm/APMHelper.app

~/Library/Application Support/apm/APMHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/APMHelper

How To Remove Advanced Mac Cleaner Virus

~/Library/Logs/APMHelper.log

~/Library/Application Support>sudo find / -iname Mac File*

~/Library/Application Support/Mac File Opener

~/Library/Application Support/Mac File Opener/Mac File Opener.app/Contents/MacOS/Mac File Opener

Items to remove

Remove Advanced Mac Cleaner Virus

~/Library/Application Support/Unpollute My Mac

/Applications/Unpollute My Mac.app /Applications/Mac Ads Cleaner.app

~/Library/Application Support/adc

Best Free Mac Virus Cleaner

~/Library/hlpradc ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.pcvark.APMHelper.plist

~/Library/Application Support/apm

/Applications/Advanced Password Manager.app ~/Library/Application Support/Mac File Opener

Postmorterm

There are log files left behind that you can inspect to gain insight:

~/Library/Logs/ummhlpr.log

Things you can figure out:

Time it was installed: i.e. time stamp 2017-04-07 11:49:26

Their campaign tracking info for the the distibutor of the software.

Remove Advanced Mac Cleaner

The files associated with it.