This Chinese Threat Group Just Flooded the App Store and Play Store With Crypto Scams

The rise of cryptocurrencies resulted in a number of threat actors deciding to use this asset as a vehicle for a wide array of scams, and it turns out that many of these scams managed to bypass security filters on the Google Play Store as well as the App Store. According to the cybersecurity research company Sophos, a China based group known as ShaZhuPhan has been implementing a highly organized attack that uses pig butchering techniques.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that so called pig butchering campaigns involve several different types of moving parts. Between malicious ads, fraudulent websites and social engineering, these threat actors have already been managing to trick unsuspecting users into falling for high yield investment scams.

The addition of apps will make them seem even more trustworthy which would allow them to target far more users than might have been the case otherwise. The malicious actors behind these attacks use stolen pictures of women on Tinder and Facebook to lure people, and they also post stolen photos of lavish lifestyles to trick their victims.

Ace Pro on the App Store and BitScan on the Play Store are just some of the apps that have been found to be taking part in this widespread crypto fraud campaign. Victims are usually told that they can put a small amount of money into an investment fund and get monumental returns, and they only find out that there are no real investments when it is far too late to do anything about it.

Victims are further tricked by being allowed to withdraw a little bit of cryptocurrency at a time, but in spite of the fact that this is the case their accounts are eventually locked and most of their funds get stolen. This is just one of the many examples of crypto fraud campaigns that are occurring, and Apple and Google need to do a much better job of ensuring that their users can stay safe from such scams in the future.

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World