Trend Micro Finds 120 Fake Crypto Mining Apps, Have You Installed One?

Mining application on mobile phones (Android Headlines)

JAKARTA – In the midst of widespread news on crypto mining, a cybersecurity company called Trend Micro managed to find around 120 fake crypto mining applications. Some of these applications are displayed on the Google Play Store application store.

The good news is that Google will soon remove a number of fake crypto mining applications from the application store. However, some of these applications have been downloaded more than one hundred thousand times.

According to a Bitcoin.com News report, Trend Micro has published a report on the findings this week aimed at warning people not to fall victim to the scam app. A number of these “cheat” crypto mining apps direct people to watch ads to pay for their service subscriptions.

“We recently discovered eight mobile apps masquerading as cryptocurrency cloud mining apps … where users can earn cryptocurrency by investing money into cloud mining operations,” Trend Micro wrote.

Here are a number of application names that Trend Micro detected: Bitfunds, Bitcoin Miner, Bitcoin (BTC) – Pool Mining Cloud Wallet, Daily Bitcoin Rewards, Minebit Pro, Crypto Holic, Bitcoin 2021, and Ethereum (ETH) – Pool Mining Cloud.

The cybersecurity firm revealed that the malicious apps “trick victims into watching advertisements, paying for subscription services with an average monthly fee of 15 US dollars (Rp216,210), and paying for mining upgrades without getting anything in return.”

Fortunately, Trend Micro has reported the findings to Google Play and some of these apps will be removed as soon as possible.

"We have reported our findings to Google Play, and the app has been removed from the Play Store immediately."

However, Trend Micro explains that searches for the keyword “cloud mining” on Google Play often lead to the same app and the app “has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.”

“More than 120 fake cryptocurrency mining apps are still available online. This app, which lacks the ability to mine cryptocurrencies and trick users into watching in-app ads, affected more than 4,500 users globally from July 2020 to July 2021," Trend Micro said as quoted by Mobile App Reputation Service (MARS).

"Our investigation also found that some of these fake cryptomining apps encourage their users to click on ads instead of encouraging them to pay for increased computing power," the cybersecurity firm added.

Not only that, Trend Micro also revealed that a number of applications such as Bitcoin (BTC) – Pool Mining Cloud Wallet and Bitcoin 2021 have dangerous features with interfaces filled with ads. In this case the user will be directed to click on an ad to prove that the user is not a robot.

After that, users of the application will be notified that they can start mining after watching ads in the application. Users are directed to “watch in-app video ads to increase mining speed.” Trend Micro also explained that users are required to invite a number of friends in order to make withdrawals.

Even if the user has done what the app has instructed them to do, they are still unable to withdraw the mined cryptocurrency from the app because they are in a queue.