Some Crypt-Mining Apps Removed From Microsoft Store

Microsoft has made a significant move involving its very own Microsoft Store. In a nutshell, the tech giant decided to remove a number of apps from the app store. This is due to the fact that they are believed to be illicitly mining digital currencies.

Illicitly Mining Monero

According to the official report, at least eight apps were discovered by Symantec back in January this year. All of them hosted what is said to be a version of Coinhive, which is basically a script designed specifically for the mining of Monero cryptocurrency. As it turns out, the script is infamous for being a tool used by cybercriminals.

Symantec detailed its report via an official blog post, which further cited explanations on its discovery. The firm stated that it reported the apps to Microsoft and, thus, were taken down subsequently. The apps were all capable of running on Windows 10 and the latest Windows 10 S Mode. The latter, in particular, has the ability to restrict app downloads to the Microsoft Store.

There are three developers responsible for developing all of the aforementioned apps. These are namely, 1clean, DigiDream, and Findoo. They are all covering many areas involving the likes of battery optimization tutorials, computer, video viewing, web browsing, web search, and download.

Symantec detailed in a post that all eight apps were able to perform the same risky behavior; hence, it was successful in pinpointing them altogether. After conducting further investigation, the firm revealed that all of these apps were developed by either the same person or organization.

No Mining Descriptions

Once downloaded and opened, the apps would automatically work by simply fetching the Monero mining JavaScript library. The process, on the other hand, is done by triggering the Google Tag Manager directly in their main domain servers. From there, the mining script would be successful in activation and, thus, would harness a good number of CPU cycles from many victims’ computers. The end result would be the mining of the said cryptocurrency.

Google has also decided to remove the JavaScript from the Google Tag Manager. This happened after the search engine giant was told about the discovery from Symantec.

It cannot be denied that at first glance, the apps would appear to provide privacy policies. However, there is no mention of digital currency mining on their descriptions. All of the eight apps were published between April and December last year, though most of them were published in the latter part of the year.