Over the past year, we’ve had the unfortunate need to warn our readers not once, but twice, about a scam we’ve dubbed CryptoRom, a portmanteau word formed from the terms “Cryptocurrency” and “Romance scam”.
Simply put, these scammers use a variety of techniques, notably including prowling on dating sites, to meet people online, form a friendship…
…not with the intention of drawing their victims into a “we’ve fallen in love, now send money” romance scam, but instead to earn their trust and lure them into bogus investments “managed” via fraudulent mobile phone apps.
Intriguingly, the crooks even target iPhone users, despite the fact that ripoff financial apps are difficult to sneak into Apple’s App Store, and Apple doesn’t allow its users to download apps from anywhere else.
Sadly, and ironically, the CryptoRom gangs have turned Apple’s strictness into a sort of sales schpiel: if anyone and everyone could download their “investment” apps, that would spoil the exclusivity, so the apps are only available by invitation, directly from the “investment” group.
SophosLabs has tracked these criminals using Apple’s business and developer toolkits to bypass the App Store, using systems such as Apple’s Enterprise Provisioning system, which allows phones directly managed by a business to install proprietary apps:
The crooks have also used Apple’s development tool TestFlight, where unreleased apps can be provided for a limited time to…
