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Alan Pope: "Multiple genuine-looking scam cryptocurrency miners and fake Bitcoin wallet applications have been published in the Snap store since 2018." (popey.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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I used a sentence from the article as the title since I felt it represented the actual issue better, let me know if I should change it.

Essentially, Snap Store has basically no restrictions on publishing new applications, allowing for scammers to impersonate legitimate applications. In this case (and several times in the past) the target was a cryptocurrency wallet, resulting in ~$490,000 worth of bitcoin being stolen.

The "Safe" rating reminds me of this xkcd:

If someone steals my laptop while I'm logged in, they can read my email, take my money, and impersonate me to my friends, but at least they can't install drivers without my permission.

(For comparison, it seems being proprietary is an automatic unsafe rating for any application, which could be considered too extreme in the other direction.)

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[–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

It’s not all bad. If the alternative is downloading binaries from a website then confined snaps are a great way to get software.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Snaps are not confined, they're root-level system add-ons.

    Flatpacks are slightly confined, they still get access to user data.

    Android 10+ apps are confined, they have to ask for particular directory access... and users can still mess up and give them access to all their data. 🤷

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