LLM App Squatting and Cloning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Xie, Yinglin, Hou, Xinyi, Zhao, Yanjie, Chen, Kai, Wang, Haoyu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Xie, Yinglin
Hou, Xinyi
Zhao, Yanjie
Chen, Kai
Wang, Haoyu
author_facet Xie, Yinglin
Hou, Xinyi
Zhao, Yanjie
Chen, Kai
Wang, Haoyu
contents Impersonation tactics, such as app squatting and app cloning, have posed longstanding challenges in mobile app stores, where malicious actors exploit the names and reputations of popular apps to deceive users. With the rapid growth of Large Language Model (LLM) stores like GPT Store and FlowGPT, these issues have similarly surfaced, threatening the integrity of the LLM app ecosystem. In this study, we present the first large-scale analysis of LLM app squatting and cloning using our custom-built tool, LLMappCrazy. LLMappCrazy covers 14 squatting generation techniques and integrates Levenshtein distance and BERT-based semantic analysis to detect cloning by analyzing app functional similarities. Using this tool, we generated variations of the top 1000 app names and found over 5,000 squatting apps in the dataset. Additionally, we observed 3,509 squatting apps and 9,575 cloning cases across six major platforms. After sampling, we find that 18.7% of the squatting apps and 4.9% of the cloning apps exhibited malicious behavior, including phishing, malware distribution, fake content dissemination, and aggressive ad injection.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_07518
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LLM App Squatting and Cloning
Xie, Yinglin
Hou, Xinyi
Zhao, Yanjie
Chen, Kai
Wang, Haoyu
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
Impersonation tactics, such as app squatting and app cloning, have posed longstanding challenges in mobile app stores, where malicious actors exploit the names and reputations of popular apps to deceive users. With the rapid growth of Large Language Model (LLM) stores like GPT Store and FlowGPT, these issues have similarly surfaced, threatening the integrity of the LLM app ecosystem. In this study, we present the first large-scale analysis of LLM app squatting and cloning using our custom-built tool, LLMappCrazy. LLMappCrazy covers 14 squatting generation techniques and integrates Levenshtein distance and BERT-based semantic analysis to detect cloning by analyzing app functional similarities. Using this tool, we generated variations of the top 1000 app names and found over 5,000 squatting apps in the dataset. Additionally, we observed 3,509 squatting apps and 9,575 cloning cases across six major platforms. After sampling, we find that 18.7% of the squatting apps and 4.9% of the cloning apps exhibited malicious behavior, including phishing, malware distribution, fake content dissemination, and aggressive ad injection.
title LLM App Squatting and Cloning
topic Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.07518