iPhone user who 'lost everything' warning others against malicious App Store app
A fake cryptocurrency app claiming to be affiliated with Bitcoin wallet Leather has been found on the Apple App Store and is robbing people of their digital assets.
It has been published by a developer called LetalComRu and uses the Leather logo. To create an illusion of legitimacy, the makers of the app have also collected fake reviews for it and it has been rated 4.9 out of 5.0.
People use cryptocurrency wallets to store cryptocurrency keys, which are required for carrying out transactions. Leather is a popular Bitcoin wallet that lets people manage their tokens and other digital assets.
As Bleeping Computer reports, the company behind Leather has warned that they don't have an iOS app and the one available on the App Store is fake. The company's website is the only place to download the wallet right now.
The fake app is a wallet drainer, meaning it has been designed to empty the crypto wallets of victims. Unfortunately, some people fell prey to it and ended up losing the assets they had collected after years of hard work.
The fake app likely tricked people into giving away their secret passphrase and performed transactions on their behalf and moved assets such as cryptocurrency and NFT to a wallet belonging to the actors behind the app.
In case you have downloaded the fake Leather app and entered your passphrase on it, it's recommended that you transfer your cryptocurrency to a new wallet.
Apple was notified about the presence of the fraudulent app a week ago by Leather, but it's still available on the App Store.
Though iPhones are generally considered more secure than Android handsets, now and then we do come across incidents of security lapse. For instance, last month, an app impersonating a popular password manager was found on the App Store and Apple wasn't exactly swift in removing it.
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