Four Fake Crypto Wallets Kicked Off the Google App Store
A previous report made it known that a fake EOS wallet was recently kicked off the google play store. Recent news has shown google following up on its statements to help rid the platform of spammy crypto apps. As of now, four other fake crypto apps have been removed from the store.
Four Fake Apps
The four fake apps are said to be a mimic of other popular crypto platforms. One of the removed apps is an impersonation of the popular Ethereum wallet, MetaMask. The others were fake wallets for Tether and NEO.
These four fake apps were discovered by a Cybersecurity researcher, Lukas Stefanko. Stefanko reported that before discovering them, the app has been existing on the platform for weeks and each one has managed to amass hundreds of downloads.
Since discovered and reported, Google has done the needful and removed the apps from its platform.
According to Stefanko, the MetaMask app was a copied version of the original wallets browsers extension interface. Through the fake app, the team behind it can easily steal users private key and the wallet password. The other fake wallets work by making it look like a personalized public address has been created for each user, whereas any cash sent to the address, was sent to an address belonging to the wallet developers.
Furthermore, Stefanko also made it known that these fake wallets were mostly built with little or no expertise. He is of the notion that these apps were built using an app builder service.
It Could Get Worse
Regarding how simple it has become to build an app of this nature, Stefanko thinks it can only get worse. He made this known in a recent blog post.
He stated that:
“That means that – once Bitcoin price rises and starts to make it into front pages – then [sic] literally anyone can “develop” simple but effective malicious app either to steal credentials or impersonate cryptocurrency wallet,”
