A children's game called "Jungle Run," disguised as a "fun running game," may have been a front for a rogue cryptocurrency-funded casino designed to swindle users out of their hard-earned money.

According to security researcher Kosta Eleftheriou, the scam cynically targeted 4-year-old children by fooling the Apple App Store's security filters.

Jungle Run, which has now disappeared from the App Store, appears harmless enough, unless you access the game using an IP address in Turkey, Italy, or Kazakhstan.

Instead of being greeted by an innocent monkey tearing through the jungle, the game plunges into an online casino. This casino is completely different from the original jungle run game and is clearly not for children.

This is no "Goodfellas"-inspired illegal gambling den, with none of the charm of the sage film. Instead, the web-based caseno asks people to fund their online wallets with cryptocurrency, says Eleftheriou.

There is also a cold cash option, as scammers are less picky about taking your money. It's certainly an ingenious way to bypass Apple's stringent security checks, but it's by no means a novel technique.

Gizmodo reporter John Biggs, who reported this story earlier, confirmed that Jungle Run did indeed turn into a gambling app when he changed his geographic location using a VPN.

Security website Threatpost quotes Netenrich's CISO, Chris Morales, as saying in an email about the scammers' tactics.

Morales said this was a case of "simple, creative human intelligence beating machine learning." This is the same reason phishing still works and social engineering is the primary method of attack, not advanced malware.

Morales admits that Jungle Run has attracted many complaints from users who were fooled by the interface, but this app is just the tip of the iceberg.

Eleftheriou told Threatpost that he gets a "steady stream of tips through the email addresses he sets up to get leads."

This type of social engineering is something Eleftheriou wants to tackle head-on and stop malicious users who are cashing in from such exploits. He also wants Apple to deter "misleading users and developers" with claims that the App Store is a safe place to download and produce apps without the threat of this type of fraud.

Eleftheriou has a lawsuit pending against Apple accusing it of "fraudulent and unfair practices" and allowing dodgy iPhone apps that drive away legitimate developers.

Anyone who deposited money into Jungle Run may have been scammed out of their deposits and payments immediately, Eleftheriou said.

If so, they would have joined many other victims who fell prey to the scam apps that populate the Apple App Store.

The fact that the scammers were willing to accept cash payments along with more privacy-focused cryptocurrencies speaks volumes about their nerve.

The ease with which the scammers were able to penetrate Apple's defenses speaks to the threat lurking in seemingly innocent apps and the widespread corruption that pervades the Apple App Store The so-called freeware apps that have littered iOS and Android app markets are One such example is the so-called freeware apps that are littering the iOS and Android app markets.

Beware of all apps unless they are clearly well-known. Ultimately, apps from unknown developers should not be downloaded, especially not until stricter safeguards are in place to stop such exploits. But such a great place to be seems to be some time away for now.

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