Sophos, an IT data security company has reported the emergence of world’s first iPhone virus in Australia. The virus is infecting only those users who have cracked or “jailbroken” their Smartphone but forget to change the default password “alpine” after installing SSH. Whenever this worm comes across such iphone, it breaks into it, changes its wallpaper to an image of Ricky Astley, a 1980s pop star, and displays a massage:” ikee is never going to give you up".
After infecting one iPhone the virus enhances its scope of activity to other iPhone as well, present on the same network with same chance of vulnerability. But the users who have not cracked or jailbroken their iPhones or changed the password from the default don’t need to be worried about it as this virus can do nothing to their Smartphones.
According to a senior consultant of Sophos, "This is a wake-up call to iPhone users around the world to take greater care about their security – especially if they jailbreak their phones,"
The creation of iPhone virus is also alarming news for the business sector, if their staff members are facing the same security problems with their iPhones. Moreover, it can provide a golden opportunity to malicious hacker to read and change the code to generate more disastrous payload.
Researchers at Sophos have succeeded to identify the creator of this warm, Ashley Towns, a 21 years old student from New South Wales. Towns has discovered his Twitter page where he has written the worm’s code. He claimed that reason behind creating this worm was to uncover 26 out of 27 accessible iPhones, who have not altered their password after cracking.
F-Secure, another security firm has also warned iPhone users to be careful in case of future virus attacks. According to one of its statement issued on a blog, the release the source code of virus is expected to increase the number of more variants in future, thus enhancing the probability of infecting more iPhones who has still the same default password.
Tue, Nov 10, 2009
Codie's World