First iPhone Worm appears, Infects Jailbroken iPhones

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Rick Astley as your Infected Jailbroken iPhone Wallpaper

With over 50 million iPhones and iPod touch sold, it is inevitable that somebody is going to crash the party with a virus. Indeed, this week the first iPhone worm appears. Luckily, it only changes the iPhone’s wall paper. And it only affects jailbroken iPhones that have not changed the password after SSH installation.

The worm, known as Rickrolls, changes user’s wallpaper to a picture of 1980’s pop star Rick Astley. The wallpaper includes a mesage, “ikee is never gonna give you up.”

The creator of the iPhone worm, known as “ikex,” left numerous comments in the worm’s source code. Comments suggest that this worm was written as an experiment. The worm’s creator also scolded users for not following directions to change the default password. He wrote, “But hey who cares it is only your bank account at stake.”

Mikko Hypponen, researcher with an Internet security firm discussed the worm on his company web site. It has instructions to change the root password on jailbroken iPhones. The blog also discussed the possibility that more variants of the worm will surface. These new variants may do actual harm to your iPhone and steal user’s personal information. Heck, it may even crack your jailbroken iPhones even if the root password has already been changed from the default one.

For now, this worm seems pretty tame. But keep an eye on more iPhone virus news if you have a jailbroken iPhone. Who knows what the next wave of iPhone worms and viruses will bring.

This is a post by The Apps Machine.