Andre Yoskowitz
9 Nov 2009 0:25
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.