Google Play Store becomes a minefield with crypto scam apps
Source: androidpolice
Further to the news highlighting a fake Uniswap application on Google Play Store has yielded at least $20,000 into the pockets of scammers, there are increasing reports of new fake popular applications attempting to scam people out of their private keys, resulting in loss of funds. The latest report comes from Trezor the company well known in the crypto world for its hardware wallets, warning users in a tweet as it came to their attention that there currently exists a fake Trezor Wallet application on Google Play Store.
Source: twitter
- The application was released to the store just two weeks ago (18 November 2020) and has started accumulating fake reviews after a week, now becoming a top search result with intents and design to steal the victims backup key, commonly known as seed phrase or private key.
- Upon installing the application the user is presented with Trezor alike themed content and the first app interaction prompting the user to insert the backup key which is then sent over to a remote server.
Source: Trezor Wallet Scam app
- Similarly to the fake Uniswap application the Trezor Wallet application appears to be positioned very high in the search ranks, with a simple search of "trezor" term returning the scam app on the third position with only advertised applications preceding it.
Source: Google Play Store
- The problem appears to be with the ease of the scammers jumping from one fake app onto another by simply rebranding to the app themes & logos and repeating relatively easy process of inflating the app store reviews, then just waiting for the victims to install the app and insert their private keys.
Related Reading
- Beware of fake Uniswap applications
- Scam Alert: Ledger SMS
- Ledger phishing emails
- Wall Street Trading Firm is accumulating Bitcoins & Alts
- Binance will reward XRP holders with Spark tokens
- Etherum Classic new mining algorithm to the rescue of its network
- Binance begins a legal action over Forbes defamantion of its business
- Uniswap site was down because of dependency on Cloudflare, is this really a big problem ?
- Critical Etherum services go down for couple of hours
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This article was originally published on publish0x