App store trickery

Hi, it’s Drake in New York. A fake password manager app was a temporary menace. But first...Three things you need to know today:• Google reb [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( [by Drake Bennett]( Hi, it’s Drake in New York. A fake password manager app was a temporary menace. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Google rebranded its Bard [chatbot as Gemini]( • Big tech brought in more cash [than ever before]( • Pinterest’s revenue missed [analysts’ estimates]( Hello, lass The well-known password manager LastPass posted a [warning]( this week to its blog about a new offering in Apple’s app store. The app in question, called “LassPass,” had a logo suspiciously similar to LastPass’s and, of course, a very similar name. As the website Bleeping Computer, which [first reported]( on the blog post, suggested, LassPass “was likely created to act as a phishing app and steal credentials.” The idea, presumably, was for someone to download LassPass and fill it with their passwords, ID numbers, PINs, crypto seed phrases, etc., so that the people behind the app could then take them and use them to log into people’s accounts and steal their identities and their money. It’s unknown whether anyone fell for it, and by yesterday LassPass had been taken down from the App Store, before this reporter could download it and take it for a test drive. It proved to be a far smaller security threat than LastPass’s deeply embarrassing 2022 breach — security researchers [said]( some of the information taken by the attackers was used to pull off a series of crypto thefts from people who’d stored their credentials with LastPass. Like those thefts, this new apparent scam targeted people who were trying to do the right thing and protect their information. And anyone who carelessly downloaded LassPass could offer as a defense that they’d placed their trust in the App Store’s vetting process, which Apple likes to trumpet to justify the steep commission it extracts from app developers. The creators of LassPass were working from a familiar playbook. Cybercriminals will often lure people onto sites whose urls are slight misspellings of well-known legitimate sites and hope they won’t notice before starting to type in their information — the practice is known as “typosquatting.” In this case, the name of the scam app rolled off the tongue better than the original, even if it made more sense as the name of a slightly retrograde Scottish dating app. —[Drake Bennett](mailto:dbennett35@bloomberg.net) The big story TikTok and Meta are the first tech companies to file European Union court appeals against new large fees meant to enforce [content moderation laws](. Both companies are attacking the EU’s method for calculating the charges, noting these fees are larger than those applied to other tech giants. One to watch [Watch the Bloomberg Technology TV interview]( with Arm CEO Rene Haas. Get fully charged Microsoft said Activision Blizzard had plans to lay off workers before its [merger with the tech giant](, in its defense to regulators. Huawei’s office in France was searched by financial prosecutors as part of a [preliminary investigation](. Finance app Revolut said about 60% of reported scams in the UK come from [come from Meta’s apps](. Canada’s largest telecommunications firm, BCE, will cut about [9% of its workforce](. More from Bloomberg Bloomberg Technology Summit: This full-day experience in downtown San Francisco on May 9 will bring together CEOs and industry leaders to focus on what’s next in artificial intelligence, the chip wars, antitrust and life after the smartphone. [Learn more](. Get Bloomberg Tech weeklies in your inbox: - [Cyber Bulletin]( for coverage of the shadow world of hackers and cyber-espionage - [Game On]( for reporting on the video game business - [Power On]( for Apple scoops, consumer tech news and more - [Screentime]( for a front-row seat to the collision of Hollywood and Silicon Valley - [Soundbite]( for reporting on podcasting, the music industry and audio trends - [Q&AI]( for answers to all your questions about AI Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Want to sponsor this newsletter? [Get in touch here](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Tech Daily newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. [Unsubscribe]( [Bloomberg.com]( [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( [Ad Choices](