Skip to content
Tech News
← Back to articles

Users lose $9.5M to fake Ledger wallet app on the Apple App Store

read original get Ledger Nano S Plus → more articles
Why This Matters

The incident highlights the ongoing risks of fake apps in app stores, which can lead to significant financial losses for consumers and undermine trust in digital security measures. It underscores the importance for users to verify app authenticity and for platforms to enhance their vetting processes. This case serves as a warning for the crypto industry and consumers to remain vigilant against sophisticated scams that exploit trusted brands.

Key Takeaways

After a fake version of the Ledger cryptocurrency wallet app made it onto the normally highly curated Apple App store, customers lost $9.5 million dollars to the malicious product. Believing it was a genuine Ledger product, people entered their seed phrases into the app, then discovered their wallets were immediately drained.

One victim, a musician who goes by G. Love, wrote: "I lost my retirement fund in a hack/Scam when I switched my Ledger over to my new computer and by accident downloaded a malicious ledger app from the Apple store. All my BTC gone in an instant." According to him, he lost 5.9 BTC (~$445,000).

Crypto sleuth zachxbt traced some of the stolen funds through Kucoin, a Chinese cryptocurrency exchange that was recently fined and forced to exit US markets over licensing and anti-money laundering failures. "The three largest victims lost seven figures each," he wrote.

Apple removed the malicious app from their App Store on April 13, six days after it had been added.