Fraudulent app drains iPhone users' digital money

“Unbelievable. Bad day. I downloaded the fake Leather Wallet app from the App Store and got scammed,” user Von Doom wrote on Twitter on March 11. In the comments section, user Redemption Arc said he also exhausted the Ethereum he had accumulated over many years by downloading a similar fake application.

According to Bleeping Computer, Leather Wallet is an elaborately invested scam app. It was developed by LetalComRu, rated 4.9/5 stars, using the logo of cold wallet company Leather to deceive users. On Apple’s app store, the app has more than 200 comments. Phone Arena assessed that most comments had similar content, created to make the prey lose their guard.

People who own digital currencies often manage their assets using cryptocurrency wallets. They can use hot wallets (wallets with a constant network connection), cold wallets (also known as hardware wallets, without a network connection, usually in the form of a USB) or warm wallets (a hybrid between hot and cold wallets, usually connected using NFC) to store security keys used for transactions.

Leather is a cold wallet chosen by many people to manage tokens and other digital assets such as NFTs. Leather wallets are famous for their convenience and security. It is as compact as a USB with an accompanying screen to display transaction information and confirmations. To date, Leather has not provided applications on the App Store and users need to go to the company’s homepage to download the wallet software to their devices.

Faced with users constantly reporting losing money due to mistakenly downloading fake apps on their iPhones, Leather announced on X that they have not yet put the app on the App Store. Users should never download the application or enter the secret key phrase. In case you have downloaded and filled in the information, you need to immediately transfer money to the new wallet. If their secret key phrase is revealed, they will have the money in their wallet drained by the crooks.

Leather said he contacted Apple a week ago but it was not immediately resolved, so many people continued to download fraudulent applications and had them stolen. On the afternoon of March 12, an Apple spokesperson told Bleeping Computer that this application had been removed from the App Store after two weeks of existence. The developer was also placed on the banned list.

Apple does not display the number of app downloads, so it is impossible to measure the damage. However, the appearance of fake Leather Wallets on the App Store for a long time is a sign that iPhones are not always safer than Android devices.

In the case of Leather Wallet, crooks took advantage of a company that did not have an app on the App Store to trick users. A month ago, a fake application named LassPass also imitated the popular password management application LastPass to deceive users. The crooks also beat Apple when they put the application on the App Store but were quickly deleted after being reported by LastPass.

Khuong Nha