In short order, Vickery’s request turned up four different Internet addresses, all of which he later learned belonged to Kromtech, the company that makes MacKeeper.

Port 27017 happens to be associated with MongoDB, a popular database management system. “Ports” are like doorways that govern access into and out of specific areas of a server, and each port number generally maps to one or a handful of known Web applications and services. Vickery told Shodan to find all known instances of database servers listening for incoming connections on port 27017. IT helpdesk guy by day and security researcher by night, 31-year-old Chris Vickery said he unearthed the 21 gb trove of MacKeeper user data after spending a few bored moments searching for database servers that require no authentication and are open to external connections. Perhaps more interestingly, the guy who found and reported the breach doesn’t even own a Mac, and discovered the data trove merely by browsing Shodan - a specialized search engine that looks for and indexes virtually anything that gets connected to the Internet.

The makers of MacKeeper - a much-maligned software utility many consider to be little more than scareware that targets Mac users - have acknowledged a breach that exposed the usernames, passwords and other information on more than 13 million customers and, er…users.

For mac instal Into the Breach