The administrators of “pig butchering,” or high-yield investment fraud, have discovered a way beyond the security measures in Google Play and Apple’s App Store, the official repositories for Android and iOS apps.
Scams involving the butchering of pigs have been going on for a while.They employ social engineering, deceptive advertising, and bogus websites.
Scammers can more easily win over a victim’s trust by including fake software on recognized download sites.
According to researchers at the cybersecurity firm Sophos, con artists contact their victims on Facebook or Tinder and persuade them to download fake applications and “invest” enormous sums of money into fictitious assets.
Such a campaign was seen by Sophos from the “ShaZhuPan” threat group, which is based in China. It demonstrates high organizational levels and separate teams for victim interface, finance, franchising, and money laundering.
The scammers use women’s profiles with photographs taken from other social media accounts to target male users on Facebook and Tinder.
The profiles that the con artists are in charge of were created to portray an opulent lifestyle, complete with images from upscale eateries, pricey stores, and far-flung locales.
