Security News > 2021 > May > Beware fake online trading apps, on iOS as well as Android

Well, SophosLabs researchers have just published a report entitled Fake Android and iOS apps disguise as trading andcryptocurrency apps, and it seems that some investment scammers are taking a similar sort of approach.

If you've gone to all the trouble of building an imposter website that looks like a genuine online currency trading business, and a fake app that is believable enough to pass muster as belonging to someone else's brand.

Technically, it's possible to install iPhone apps that didn't come from the App Store, but it's a complex and closed process designed so that developers can test apps before releasing them, or so that companies can produce in-house apps that are used only inside the organisation rather than offered commercially to the public.

Apple carefully limits the number of test apps that it will sign for any development team, and keeps track of the number of phones that are using those apps, specifically to discourage commercial coders from misusing the process as a way of sidestepping the App Store.

Online trading scammers who have iPhone users in their sights might as well take the trouble to get potential victims to fall in love with the scam first, before tempting them with their bogus apps.

How the crooks talk their victims into installing the fake apps without using the App Store.

News URL

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2021/05/12/tempted-by-cryptocoins-fake-trading-apps-get-personal/