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The iPhone has its first worm: Rick Roll'd!

9 November 2009 0:25 by Andre "DVDBack23" Yoskowitz | 14 comments

The Apple iPhone has its first virus, a wonderful Rick Rolling worm that has been infecting jailbroken phones in Australia this week.

The worm, dubbed Ikee, changes the wallpaper of the exploited phones to a picture of Rick Astley and then looks to infect other phones.

Despite being harmless now, "there is a real danger that someone could take this code and make it do something malicious," says Graham Cluley, a technology consultant with security vendor Sophos, however.

So far, the only users vulnerable are those using jailbroken phones with SSH running. Many of the users are still using the default password, allowing for easy access. SSH allows for remote access between the phone and the Internet.

The worm was written by a young Australian, Ashley Towns, who was bored and decided to prank some friends. "It was supposed to be a small prank I definitely wasn't expecting it to get as far as it did," says Towns.

Many of those hit by the virus added that they thanked Towns after for getting them to wise up and change the password.

Permalink to this article | Topic: Phones

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Discuss this article!
strykertc (Newbie) 9 November 2009 1:15
great. here we go... pretty sure there will be more to come... [ + quote]
creaky (Moderator) 9 November 2009 3:33
I can see it now, a group of friends all sat in a mall dribbling over each other's iPhones (didn't anyone tell them that you can actually use phones to make calls instead of showing them off as fashion accessories) and Rick Astley breaks out across the group. How apt, owned. Main PC ~ Intel C2Q Q6600 (G0 Stepping)/Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3/2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500/Zalman CNPS9700/Antec 900/Corsair HX 620W Network ~ DD-WRT ~ 2node WDS/WPA ~ Buffalo WHR-G54S. 4node WPA2/AES ~ WRT54GS v6 (inc. WEP BSSID), WRT54G v2, WRT54G v3.1, WRT54G2 v1, WRT54G v5. * Forum Rules * [ + quote]
ITSDAVID (Newbie) 9 November 2009 3:33
Haha I always wanted to rick roll my buddys on there iphone.. [ + quote]
snake2 (Newbie) 9 November 2009 9:00
*Originally posted by creaky:* I can see it now, a group of friends all sat in a mall dribbling over each other's iPhones (didn't anyone tell them that you can actually use phones to make calls instead of showing them off as fashion accessories) and Rick Astley breaks out across the group. How apt, owned. Wait you can use cell phones to make calls? Why didn't anyone tell me this before?! [ + quote]
creaky (Moderator) 9 November 2009 9:09
*Originally posted by snake2:* Wait you can use cell phones to make calls? Why didn't anyone tell me this before?! Sorry, can't take your call right now, have to take this video call from Rick Astley. Main PC ~ Intel C2Q Q6600 (G0 Stepping)/Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3/2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500/Zalman CNPS9700/Antec 900/Corsair HX 620W Network ~ DD-WRT ~ 2node WDS/WPA ~ Buffalo WHR-G54S. 4node WPA2/AES ~ WRT54GS v6 (inc. WEP BSSID), WRT54G v2, WRT54G v3.1, WRT54G2 v1, WRT54G v5. * Forum Rules * [ + quote]
emugamer (Member) 9 November 2009 12:01
*Quote:* *Originally posted by creaky:* I can see it now, a group of friends all sat in a mall dribbling over each other's iPhones (didn't anyone tell them that you can actually use phones to make calls instead of showing them off as fashion accessories) and Rick Astley breaks out across the group. How apt, owned. Wait you can use cell phones to make calls? Why didn't anyone tell me this before?! Unfortunately, the fact that iPhones cannot be used reliably as a phone has made them a fashion accessory/game device. [ + quote]
Pepp77 (Member) 9 November 2009 14:30
*Originally posted by emugamer:* *Quote:* Unfortunately, the fact that iPhones cannot be used reliably as a phone has made them a fashion accessory/game device. Never had an issue using mine as a phone or anything else for that matter. GA-P35C-DS3R Rev 2.0 F6 - E8200 @ 3.2Ghz - 2x1GB Corsair XMS2 800Mhz@4-4-4-12 - Sapphire 2600XT 512mb GDDR3 - CM690 Dominator - Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - 250GB Maxtor and 500GB WD internal SATA HDD - 500GB Seagate eSATA and 500GB Maxtor One Touch III USB External HDD - 2 x Pioneer DVR-215DBK - Windows XP SP2 - Logitech X-540 5.1 70W RMS Speakers - Polaroid FLU-2632 Monitor [ + quote]
ThePastor (Junior Member) 9 November 2009 19:02
But it's an Apple... how did it get a virus??? [ + quote]
xnonsuchx (Member) 9 November 2009 19:23
*Originally posted by ThePastor:* But it's an Apple... how did it get a virus??? Because they were hacked by their owners, making them more susceptible. [ + quote]
UnDedFish (Newbie) 9 November 2009 20:31
*Quote:* *Originally posted by ThePastor:* But it's an Apple... how did it get a virus??? Because they were hacked by their owners, making them more susceptible. Wonder how long it takes Apple to realize this can be used as a way to keep people from jail-breaking. [ + quote]
KillerBug (Senior Member) 10 November 2009 5:28
*Quote:* *Originally posted by ThePastor:* But it's an Apple... how did it get a virus??? Because they were hacked by their owners, making them more susceptible. No, because they didn't change their passwords. If everyone who had a MAC was using the same password. It's very silly to blame jailbreaking, or even apple for this. It is a user error...you might as well say that the calculator is broken because 5+5=10, but it gave the result as 9 when you entered 5+4. BTW...there are apple viruses and trojans and spyware...they just are not very common because there are few apples around, and those who have them don't do much of anything with them. [ + quote]
ShowertBa (Inactive) 11 November 2009 4:22
SPAM removed [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 11 November 2009 4:28
jaqafter (Newbie) 11 November 2009 7:39
I seen this coming a long long time ago. When Apple announced the closed ecosystem they had planned, they instantly created a pool of users that refuse to be contained by it. Fortunately this fellow used the incident as a warning. Now that the code is out on the interwebs for others to use? Who knows.. Down with sigs. [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 14 November 2009 16:15
babysatan (Newbie) 12 November 2009 10:53
Ahh...the classic rickroll. It's been so long. I thought everyone had given up on that cheesy crap. It's so immature. /leaves to go rickroll some people [ + quote]