Malware Problems in Linux App Stores
Trust It?
© Lead Image © alphaspirit, 123RF.com
Fake cryptocurrency wallets in the Snap Store have cost users hundreds of thousands of dollars. A community project aims to create more transparency for Snap package users.
In February 2024, an application that called itself Exodus appeared in the Canonical Snap Store. The store page looked professional: an impressive logo, appealing screenshots, a detailed description, and the reputable-sounding publisher name Movement Exod. Everything pointed to a legitimate cryptocurrency wallet application, as you can see from Figure 1. But these appearances were deceiving.
A few days after the release, a user with the pseudonym of "castle" posted a disturbing question on the Snapcraft forum. After restoring his wallet via the app, his entire balance had disappeared, transferred to an unknown address. The damage: around 9 bitcoins, worth approximately $490,000 at the time.
Former Canonical employee Alan Pope analyzed the suspicious application on an isolated virtual machine [1] [2] [3]. His findings were clear: While the real Exodus wallet is an Electron-based application, the Snap was a Flutter app. The metadata in snap.yaml still contained the default placeholder text from the Snapcraft template – a clear indication of a fake that had been cobbled together in a hurry.
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