Security is the most important issue in crypto, and security awareness is essential before financial literacy. A significant portion of investors is vulnerable to attacks. They can operate on unreliable websites or applications. The latest incident emerged involving the Google Play Store.
Play Store Crypto Applications
Google’s app store hosted a wallet application that was actually malicious and drained all the capital of a crypto investor named Maria Vaca. Although it appeared to be a legitimate wallet application, this program, uploaded to the app store as a trap by attackers, aimed to steal users’ cryptocurrencies.
Following her bad experience, Vaca filed a lawsuit against Google. Maria accuses the company of negligence, arguing that such dangerous applications being published in the store is Google’s fault. Google is responsible for protecting its users against fraudulent applications, and such negligence could lead to much larger losses and data thefts.
Fraudulent Applications
Google filed lawsuits against numerous fake applications that were found to have defrauded over a hundred thousand users worldwide in April this year. These include crypto-related applications in categories like exchanges, wallets, and others. Attackers submit their applications for approval with fake identities and misleading information to bypass Google’s security checks.
Moreover, remotely updatable codes, hidden or encrypted malicious code blocks cause Google’s inspections to fail even more. For instance, in a wallet application, when you create a new wallet, attackers can add code tricks that show their own wallets to you. If this is done for every user, it would be noticeable, so the attack might be performed on one out of every 100 users. Alternatively, the wallet might work normally, but while you think you are transferring to your own address, the transfer is redirected to the attackers’ address in the background.
Legal experts say the outcome of Vaca’s case will largely depend on whether Google was aware of the fraudulent application and how long the application remained in the store.
Vaca’s lawyer, Chris Vernon, says this incident is neither the first nor the last. As the digital economy grows, giants like Google need to further develop their security mechanisms to protect customers.
