Money Matters, Simplified.
'Ikee' worm hits jailbroken iPhones
by Jaspreet Virk - November 9, 2009 - comments
It spreads by searching the infected person’s phone network to find out other jailbroken phones and once it finds one, it gets transferred by using the default password and SSH
New York, November 9 -- The first iPhone worm is out in the open and many Iphone users in Australia have fallen prey to it.
The worm, dubbed “ikee” is not doing anything particularly bad or damaging. It only changes the default wallpaper on the Iphone to the picture of Rick Astley, a British pop star who sang Never Gonna Give You Up", and displays a message stating, “ikee is never going to give you up”.
Further, ikee is only affecting jailbroken iPhones that have installed Unix software SSH (secure shell) with Apple's default root password, "alpine" still in use.
It spreads by searching the infected person’s phone network to find out other jailbroken phones and once it finds one, it gets transferred by using the default password and SSH.
A prank could prove dangerous
The worm, written Wednesday by Ashley a 21 year-old unemployed programmer from Wollogong, Australia, “was supposed to be a small prank”, which he had decided to play on his friends.
“I definitely wasn't expecting it to get as far as it did," stated Towns.
Though no serious damage has been done yet, the vulnerability has been exposed, which could prove expensive for the iPhone users as the worm could be modified into something serious.
Graham Cluley, a technology consultant with security vendor Sophos was quoted by PCWorld as saying, “There is a real danger that someone could take this code and make it do something malicious.”
Readers’ reactions
There are mixed reactions from readers who have taken to blogs and forums to discuss the iPhone worm issue. While majority have voiced annoyance, there are others who believe that it is a well learnt lesson for Iphone users who are still using their default password.
A reader named PCMan4ever commented on PCWorld, “And how long until it happens on a "non-jail broken" Iphone? It seems that Apple and it's users will have to get out of their shell and start thinking about security.”
Another reader posted his view on engadget saying, “One bad Apple spoils the whole bunch. . . . .”
“He's actually doing the jail-breaking community a favour - ok, so having the worm reset the pic to ricky is a tad mean and unnecessary, but I guess it forces the kind of person who leaves their default password on to really think about what their phone is actually doing,” stated a reader named Law on The Register.