93,000 users have fallen prey to fake crypto mining apps – Lookout says

The crypto industry continues to draw the interest of millions of traders and investors. It now has an estimated market cap of more than $2 trillion. However, this has given fraudsters windows of opportunities to launch their attacks against unsuspecting victims. They have continued to up their game to dupe users.

A recent report revealed that about 93,000 people have become victims of a recent fraud campaign on a fake crypto mining app. According to security researchers at Lookout Threat Lab, the victims lost about $350,000 from the dubious actions of the scammers.

Some of the apps are on Google Play Store

Lookout noted that there are about 200 Android apps, with about 26 of them on Google Pay offering cloud cryptocurrency mining services.

Many of them preach to be providing these services genuinely at a fee, but in the real sense, they are there to swindle users, the researchers noted.

The scammers claim that the fees are for payments for mining crypto. The researchers also found out that CloudScam and BitScam are two of the major brands promoting fraudulent crypto apps.

The threat actors reportedly designed the apps to target those that have interests in cryptocurrencies.

Users warned against downloading such apps

Apart from advertising fake crypto mining services, the applications displayed bogus minimum account balances to deceive the users.

The researchers also explained why the apps have been able to operate without any suspicion from the users. Lookout stated,

They are usually shells designed to lure users that have been caught up in the cryptocurrency craze and “collect money for services that don’t exist,” the researchers noted.

Lookout warned that hundreds of these fake apps are available on third-party app stores for download, so users should be very careful when downloading such apps.