Apple and Bitcoin
Frauds, hacks, and scams seem destined to be the shadow that clouds the image of cryptocurrencies for a long time to come, and even more so if criminals manage to circumvent the security of technology behemoths such as Apple and Google, causing heavy losses to victims who rely on their operating systems’ “secure” ecosystem of applications.
Phillipe Christodoulou was one of the most recent victims. He lost a significant sum of money after downloading what he believed to be an Apple-verified wallet.
As Phillipe Christodoulou told The Washington Post, he had stored a small fortune in his Trezor hardware wallet. To monitor his funds, he decided to download a Trezor app available in the iOS AppStore.
The app had several positive reviews, so he never thought about any possible problem. But in reality, what he had downloaded was a phishing app designed to steal his victims’ cryptocurrencies by making them believe they were using the original wallet.
By entering his key to restore his wallet, he unknowingly gave the scammers the information they needed to access his funds. And that’s precisely what they did.
Phillipe Christodoulou lost 17.1 Bitcoins with no hope of making amends.
At the time, the 17.1 Bitcoins stolen represented just over $600K, but as of today, the losses would be worth over a million dollars.
But did Phillipe Christodoulou make a mistake? The Apple ecosystem is one of the most centralized and controlled in the world. Absolutely all processes are supervised by Apple, which is responsible for ensuring the security of the apps downloaded on any of its devices. Precisely for this reason, the jailbreak movement is very strong among Apple users because the company fights any method of installing third-party apps.
Therefore, whether Apple was responsible or not would be legally correct for a court to determine. Still, there are several conviction elements for Phillipe Christodoulou to try a case against the technology giant.
Christodoulou has his own opinion, and his rage leans more towards Apple rather than the scammers themselves. He believes his loss is more Apple’s fault than the criminals’, and he believes it is Apple the one liable to pay damages:
“They betrayed the trust that I had in them. Apple doesn’t deserve to get away with this.”
So far, however, neither Apple nor Trezor has made a statement. Trezor does not currently have an app on iOS but has been active in denouncing several phishing tools that the Google team has approved for Android users. The company has also fixed and patched several bugs that made it prone to hacks and other types of attacks.
According to The Washington Post, just last year, Apple removed over 6,500 apps with “hidden or undocumented features.” Too bad this fake Trezor app was not one of them.
