Not the first time this has happened, but recently the Snap store from Canonical hosted a scam bitcoin app that claimed to be “Exodus wallet” that caused a user to lose money.
Posting on the Snapcraft forum an unfortunate user noted their wallet has been emptied after using it, and a day later a Canonical staffer mentioned it had now been removed and they were investigating the incident.
Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, has now jumped into the discussion in another forum post to note that while “cryptocurrency is largely a cesspit of ignoble intentions even if the mathematics are interesting”, Shuttleworth doesn’t think that “banning cryptocurrency apps helps” as “If anything, it would make using Linux much worse.”.
Additionally, Shuttleworth also opened an additional forum post to discuss requiring “more comprehensive proof of publisher identity for every publisher” for Snaps. So if you have good ideas for them to implement, to make Snap publishing more secure – drop a reply in the linked post.
Hopefully Canonical come up with a good solution, because repeating issues like this reflect pretty poorly on Snap, Canonical and Ubuntu.
Alan Pope (formerly of Canonical, now Axiom) wrote up two blog posts on it “Exodus Bitcoin Wallet: $490K Swindle” and the follow-up “Exodus Bitcoin Wallet: Follow up 2.0” that you may want to read for a little more background.
