‘Jail Broken’ iPhones Get ‘RickRoll’d’ With New Virus
Apple’s iPhone has its first worm, although it doesn’t appear to be harmful to devices.
The worm has been reported in Australia, where users say the program changes the phone’s wallpaper to an image of 80s singer Rick Astley, which reads "ikee is never going to give you up".
Ikee is the name of the new virus, whish appears to be more of a joke than malicious, although experts warn that it exposes a vulnerability that could lead to more dangerous viruses to come.
"The creator of the worm has released full source code of the four existing variants of this worm," BBC News quoted Mikko Hypponen of security firm F-secure.
"This means that there will quickly be more variants, and they might have nastier payload than just changing your wallpaper."
What’s more, the worm only affects iPhones that have been “jail broken” in order to run various programs.
The image and text of the iPhone worm is linked to an Internet phenomenon known as “Rick Rolling,” which involves users sending links that have been disguised to take unsuspecting Web users to a video of Astley’s music video for “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
Hacker Ashley Towns admitted to Australia’s ABC News Online that he created the virus in order to raise awareness of the phone’s vulnerability.
"People are stupid and this is to prove it," said Towns.
"It’s not that hard guys. But hey who cares its only your bank details at stake."
"What’s clear is that if you have jail-broken your iPhone or iPod Touch, and installed SSH, then you must always change your root user password to something different than the default, ‘alpine’," wrote Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos.
"In fact, it would be a good idea if you didn’t use a dictionary word at all."
"Phone users may rush into jail-breaking their iPhones in order to add functionality that Apple may have denied to them, but if they do so carelessly they may also risk their iPhone becoming the target of a hacker," he added.
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