Exodus Bitcoin Wallet: $490K Swindle
popey.com
tl;dr: A Bitcoin investor was recently scammed out of 9 Bitcoin (worth around $490K) in a fake “Exodus wallet” desktop application for Linux, published in the Canonical Snap Store. This isn’t the first time, and if nothing changes, it likely won’t be the last. This post turned out longer than I expected. So if you don’t have the time there’s a briefer summary at the bottom under “In summary (the tl;dr)” along with my suggestions on what Canonical should do now.

A Bitcoin investor was recently scammed out of 9 Bitcoin (worth around $490K) in a fake “Exodus wallet” desktop application for Linux, published in the Canonical Snap Store. This isn’t the first time; if nothing changes, it likely won’t be the last.

    • @danielfgomOPEnglish
      7•1 year ago

      That’s is the genuine one. There is a genuine company called Exodus for Crypto. The problem is that a scammer made their own clone and nobody verified whether they really are from the Exodus company.

      If you check the manifest on Flathub you’ll see they verified it belongs to the real Exodus

      • @coolmojo
        1•1 year ago

        Yes. You are right. Thanks. Just listened to the Linux Matters podcast episode about this. Crazy.

    • Daniel QuinnEnglish
      4•1 year ago

      42,396 installs… Holy shit.

      Edit, from the article:

      This “Exodus” application published in the Snap store was indeed a scam application. There is a genuine organisation that developed a real, seemingly ’legitimate’ cryptocurrency wallet application. This is not that.

      Any chance that the FlatHub one is legit?

      • @TheGrandNagusEnglish
        5•1 year ago

        Apparently the Flathub one is indeed legit

    • @[email protected]
      2•1 year ago

      I mean FlatHub isn’t safe in general. You could just target someone downloading the package and give them a malicious package instead. FlatHub doesn’t check sigs, so its a hot mess

      • @danielfgomOPEnglish
        4•11 months ago

        They seem to be doing more on that side than Canonical is. But I agree, it should be MANDATORY that the developer is thoroughly vetted and approved and the code run and checked before publishing.

        I hope this is a wake up call for Snaps and Flatpaks.

        Apps from the repo have the security, which is why I always default to the distribution repo

        • qaz
          1•1 year ago

          it should be MANDATORY that the developer is thoroughly vetted and approved and the code run and checked Brexit before publishing.

          Brexit?

      • @AProfessionalEnglish
        1•11 months ago

        The repo is gpg signed. I don’t know why you think thats not sufficient.

        “packages” don’t exist like traditional distros. Its a large repo of data.

                • @[email protected]
                  1•11 months ago

                  No, my point is that if flat pak doesn’t document that they cryptographically verify the authenticity of packages, then they dont.

                  Even the ostree docs say that it supports it gpg encryption. It supports it. It doesn’t enforce it. That depends on the implementation.

                  I will continue to harshly criticize projects that leave users vulnerable. Want to prove me wrong? Link me to the flat pak docks that clearly say that all packages are cryptographically verified after download and before upload.

                  • @AProfessionalEnglish
                    0•11 months ago

                    Look, Flatpak does, and it’s secure. You can spread misinformation if you like but don’t be proud of it.

                    You clearly have no capacity to accept new information in good faith.