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:
(For comparison, it seems being proprietary is an automatic unsafe rating for any application, which could be considered too extreme in the other direction.)
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community’s icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
For comparison, I wonder how vulnerable Flathub (flatpak’s primary repo) is to these kinds of manipulations… Seems like every app manifest there is publicly available and is compiled on their servers, presumably making it easier to spot shady apps and updates, and the submission process requires manual approval.
Another thing that they do that should make the process less vulnerable is they try to get developers involved in packaging their own applications (and have a verified badge, though I’m not sure how rigorous their verification is).