Malware Disguises Itself As Clubhouse For Android Which Doesn’t Exist Yet

Clubhouse co-founder has recently said that it will only have an Android version of the app in “a couple of months“. Because of this, there are plenty of fake apps pretending to be the app plaguing the Google Play Store. But a new one is trying to bypass this by making you download it directly from a fake website.

ESET malware researcher Lukas Stefanko found a clone of the official Clubhouse website pushing the BlackRock malware. And because the official website is so simple, it’s not too difficult to make a perfect copy of it.

Though naturally, there’s something that gives its identity as a poser away. One is that it uses the .mobi domain rather than .com that the official Clubhouse website uses. The other is that the Apple App Store download button is replaced with one for the Google Play Store. And when you do hit the button, rather than redirecting you back to the Google Play Store like most legit apps, it downloads the malware to your device directly.

The ESET report on the fake Clubhouse for Android website also explains the nature of the BlackRock Trojan type malware. What it does is scans your device for login data and steals them. And it does so for over 458 online services, from messaging and social media apps all the way to shopping and banking.

It’s a sophisticated attempt to infect victims to be sure, but not being one is, in contrast, pretty simple. And it’s down to simply killing the FOMO and accepting that Clubhouse for Android is a few months away.

Discord Considers Selling Itself For US$10 Billion

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the various lockdown-esque measures worldwide, gaming is bigger than ever before. And Discord, being the go-to messaging and voice chat app, has grown to be just as important. Which is probably why the company is going through a sales process that could see it being sold for US$10 billion (~RM41.16 billion).

Sources to GamesBeat claim that multiple companies have expressed interest in acquiring Discord. The company started exploring its options following that. And now, the company behind the app is in its final negotiations with a potential buyer. According to Bloomberg, that company may well be Microsoft.

Normally, with an acquisition, users would worry if the identity of an app will change to suit the new owner. This may not quite be the case for Discord. In fact, it may ultimately not even be sold if it deems that the new owner will forcibly make it do something it doesn’t want to.

The GamesBeat report notes that Discord co-founder and CEO Jason Citron previously founded OpenFeint. This would then be acquired by GREE for US$104 million (~RM428 million) in 2011. But the new owner will eventually shut down the service. And this is likely something that Citron wishes to avoid with Discord. In fact, Citron turned down a number of offers back in 2018, because buyers wanted Discord to do things that it didn’t want to, like advertising.

So ultimately, Discord users will likely have nothing to fear about their reliable voice chat application changing. Its co-founder and CEO seems to value its identity as a communications software above the allure of money. So even if it does get a new owner, it’s unlikely that the voice chat app will become something unrecognisable to its users.