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Currently viewing the tag: "Worm"
Unlike the relatively harmless yet still annoying Ikee worm that started popping up on jailbroken iPhones a few weeks ago, this new virus truly is malicious. It can only target jailbroken phones and can be transmitted when two phones use the same wifi network and allows the phone to be remotely accessed and controlled without the owner having any idea it is happening. It is currently only estimated that a few hundred phones are infected in the Netherlands by those who use ING Direct bank, but the BBC is reporting that the worm could easily spread to thousands of iPhones. Thankfully, the worm can only target jailbroken iPhones that have SSH installed, without the default password changed. So, similarly to the Ikee worm, this is easily preventable to anyone who has half a brain to change the default password. The virus connects the phone to a web-based control interface which has been narrowed down to somewhere in Lithuania.
Although this is currently only affecting customers of ING Direct in the Netherlands, the best way to prevent this from affecting you is to not jailbreak your iPhone or, if you must, at least change the default SSH password.
The first known worm to target iPhones has struck. This relatively harmless worm only targets phones which have been jailbroken, suggesting perhaps that non-jailbroken phones may be tougher to target, and all it does is change the user’s home screen to a 1980′s era photo of Rick Astley with a line of text above his head reading “ikee is never gonna give you up”. As reported by Forbes, the worm is no way harmful, other than making you look at Rick Astley. The article states that the worm is hardly a threat and, “Instead, it seems to be half warning, half prank. Ikee’s author, who identifies himself or herself as ‘ikex’ in the worm’s source code, also wrote in the code that ‘People are stupid, and this is to prove it so,’ adding that users should read their phones’ manuals.” Although this one may not be malicious, it opens the proverbial “can of worms” and variants of this or new code altogether are now more feasible.
Edit (11/11/09): I’m seeing a lot of searches coming to this site looking for the source code of the virus. You should be ashamed of yourself and you will not find that or any other malicious code here.
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