How Russian banks are using trojan horse apps to offer services to their customers in ‘banned countries’ | – Times of India

Due to the Ukraine invasion, some Russian banks have been restricted, prompting Apple to remove their apps from the App Store. However, these banks have found a workaround to circumvent the restrictions and maintain their presence on the platform and cater their users in countries where they are banned.
How these banks are making their services available via App Store
These banking apps which are banned from the App Store due to sanctions are using a disguise as other apps using the ‘trojan horse’ technique.
Apple Insider has reported that recently a Russian bank named Sber released a personal lending tracker app that includes the actual banking app inside. The lending app transformes into a fully functional Sber banking app to offer users its banking services.
Sber is not alone. The report mentions that Tinkoff Bank also published a calendar app on the App Store that concealed its banking app using a similar trick.
These ‘trojan horse’ apps seem to be fooling Apple’s App review process by appearing as the app as per their name. Their file sizes also increase after approval to include the much larger banking app bundles. However, this is allowing banks to offer the banking services to their customers.