Cybersecurity researchers at Sophos have discovered a Bitcoin wallet filled with tokens worth $1.4 million that was collected via crypto scammers.?
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Codenamed ¡®CryptoRom¡¯ by Sophos, the scammers were targeting iPhone users on popular dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble. They¡¯d meet first as potential partners and would ask for the victims to move to another texting platform for messaging. Soon after they'd pitch the victims to invest in a fake crypto trading app, stealing their money along the way.?
The report highlights that these unidentified crypto scammers have been targeting individuals in Asia and are now spreading across Europe and the US.?
Via these compromised apps, attackers also gain access to their iPhones. The apps (which were unverified) were distributed on the internet using fake sites that look as good as the real deal.
According to the report, the attackers are using ¡®Enterprise Signature¡¯, which helps organisations in pre-testing new iOS applications with select iPhone users before the final version is submitted to the App Store.?
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With the help of this tool, the attackers can target a large chunk of iPhone users with their fake crypto-trading apps and gain remote management control over their devices.
Sophos report highlighted, ¡°From news reports, we learned one victim lost $87,000 (roughly Rs. 65 crores). There are additional news reports in UK of these scams, with one victim losing $45,000 (roughly Rs. 33.8 lakhs) to a scammer who contacted them through Facebook, and another who lost $25,000 (roughly Rs. 18.2 lakhs) after being scammed by someone who contacted through Grindr.¡±?
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To avoid being another victim, researchers warn budding investors to only make use of verified crypto exchange apps and websites from Apple App Store (in case of an iPhone) or the Google Play Store (in case of Android).
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