{"id":52124,"date":"2026-06-05T17:07:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=52124"},"modified":"2026-06-05T17:07:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:07:03","slug":"sirius-pomodoro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/05\/sirius-pomodoro\/","title":{"rendered":"Sirius Pomodoro"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/2026\/06\/05\/disguised-russian-banking-app-surges-to-top-three-on-the-us-app-store\/\">Zac Hall<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/2026\/06\/05\/disguised-russian-banking-app-surges-to-top-three-on-the-us-app-store\/\">\n<p>The third most popular free iPhone app in the U.S. App Store today is a mysterious productivity app that&rsquo;s only available in Russian. That&rsquo;s a pretty obvious red flag that something isn&rsquo;t quite what it seems.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The app icon looks similar to a star mapping app. The app itself isn&rsquo;t available in English. It seems unlikely that this productivity app organically found its way to the third-place ranking for its advertised purpose.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The reality seems to be that the app is a Russian banking app disguised as a Pomodoro timer. Activity on Telegram this week points to the app actually being a client for Russian financial institution <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/VTB_Bank\">VTB Bank<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/linklog\/vtb-sirius-app\/\">Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/linklog\/vtb-sirius-app\/\">\n<p>In Russian media, the developer says there are <a href=\"https:\/\/pulsfid.ru\/news\/sirius-ot-vtb-skrytyy-bankovskiy-klient-v-app-store-pod-vidom-pomodoro-166273039\">other apps lined up<\/a> to take the place of this one after it is inevitably removed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/25\/apps-for-youtube\/\">Apps for YouTube&#x2120;&trade;&reg;&#8226;!<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/16\/the-app-store-scammer-strikes-back\/\">The App Store Scammer Strikes Back<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/10\/sanctioned-entities-slip-through-app-store-controls\/\">Sanctioned Entities Slip Through App Store Controls<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zac Hall: The third most popular free iPhone app in the U.S. App Store today is a mysterious productivity app that&rsquo;s only available in Russian. That&rsquo;s a pretty obvious red flag that something isn&rsquo;t quite what it seems. [&#8230;] The app icon looks similar to a star mapping app. The app itself isn&rsquo;t available in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-06-05T21:07:06Z","apple_news_api_id":"b3839cf0-5c11-4131-bdeb-74f84db86d92","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-06-05T21:07:06Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/As4Oc8FwRQTG963T4Tbhtkg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[91,2036,31,2741,26,1676],"class_list":["post-52124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-appstore","tag-app-store-scams","tag-ios","tag-ios-26","tag-iosapp","tag-russia"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52125,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52124\/revisions\/52125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}