Every year, a large number of bogus applications appear on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, and the most recent additions are fraudulent trade apps that entice people into “pig butchering” schemes.
In case you’re wondering, pig butchering is a form of fraud in which investors are led to feel they are receiving large returns on their investments by fabricating figures. Scammers frequently utilize social engineering strategies to discourage people from taking their fictitious profits and persuade them to keep investing more and more money.
According to a recent BleepingComputer post quoting cybersecurity firm Group-IB, these fraudulent trading applications, which are part of the “UniShadowTrade” malware family, were discovered earlier this year in May and are constructed using the UniApp framework.
Some of the most prominent applications that duped unwary users include SBI-INT (iOS), Finans Insights (Android), and Finans Trader6 (Android).
According to the cybersecurity organization, these phony trade applications may also impersonate actual cryptocurrency and trading platforms. The graphic below shows some of the names used by these fraudulent trading applications. According to the research, some of these applications concealed themselves as tools for “algebraic mathematical formulas and 3D graphic volume area calculations” on iOS.
Once installed, they routed users to bogus trading sites that can only be accessed by invitation codes, with some scammers even engaging their victims in talks via dating apps to garner confidence.
While these applications have been withdrawn from the official Android and iOS app stores, they were downloaded by thousands of consumers prior to detection. Since then, these scammers have apparently moved on to phishing websites. To avoid swine slaughtering scams, conduct some research on the background of the investment trading platform you are joining up for, and verify if it is authorized or controlled by your local authority.