‘Fake’ App That Looks Like It’s From Samsung to Update Firmware Has Been Downloaded 10m Times

By
George Yang
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If you see this app in the Google Play Store and are using a Samsung phone, what do you do?

Image: CSIS TechBlog

Do you download it because you want the latest updates for your Samsung phone?

Or have you spotted something weird about this app?

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Here, we point out a few things:

Image: CSIS TechBlog
  1. The developer isn’t Samsung but “Updato”. Even if that’s a Samsung developer, why would they give their developer such an unrelated name?’
  2. It’s under “News & Magazines”. Why would an app that updates your software be categorized under “News & Magazines”?
  3. Why would they need to have ads and in-app purchase? They’re not making enough money from selling phones?

However, not many people are that skeptical: according to CSIS TechBlog, over 10 million people have downloaded the app.

And here’s the problem: it’s, indeed, “fake”.

App Packaged with Website

The app isn’t actually a native app: instead, it’s merely kind of like a “web browser” that only loads one website. You can call it a “web app”.

So, the fake app simply asks people to pay for updates to the latest Samsung firmware.

Well, not exactly.

The scammer apparently provides “free update”, but the speed would be capped at 56 KBps, which would take hours for an update to be downloaded. According to reviews, it’s so slow that it’ll eventually “time out”.

For a fee, you can download at normal speed.

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Image: CSIS TechBlog

I don’t know about you, but if Samsung is asking for money just to update a software, I’m sure everyone’ll move on to Huawei.

The app even provides other services for a fee, like unlocking your SIM card. And of course, there are ads on the app.

Suffice to say, it has been taken down by Google Play Store, but you’ve got to wonder: why had it been downloaded a whopping 10 million times before it’s gone?

Here’s why.

Apple’s App Store vs Google Play Store

For a start, let’s go with Apple’s App Store. Over there, the folks are very serious about any app in their store: every new app, and even update, is reviewed manually by a human. I’m not sure how long they take, but for our app, our developer told us that once the app is being reviewed (usually at night in Singapore, which is the day in the US), they’ll respond within two hours.

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It’s not certain whether they really checked the app for two whole hours, but they really do check: once, our update was rejected because the screenshot in the app store doesn’t match the app (we forgot to update the screenshot).

And Apple’s so serious, any new app developer would even receive a call (yes, a physical phone call) from an Apple rep just to ensure that we’re what we say we are.

The abovementioned fake app wouldn’t have made it to the Apple app store because they don’t allow “web apps” – they only allow apps that are coded natively.

As for Google Play Store, it’s a tad different: AI does most of the work. Once an app is sent over, AI would check the app—in fact, you can see the AI “playing” with the app once you’ve uploaded it.

Needlessly to say, the AI might miss something, and in this case, the fake app. It’s only after a while (whether through machine learning or reports from users) that the AI would realise it’s not a legit app and remove it from Google Play Store.

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By then, it might be a little too late.

As a developer, we might prefer Google Play Store’s system since it’s relatively faster and hassle-free, but as you might be able to tell from this episode, Apple’s strict requirements benefit users a lot more.

Now you know why there are so many weird apps in Google Play Store and not even one in Apple App Store.

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George Yang
Email: [email protected]