A 21-year-old Australian man has admitted creating what is thought to be the first virus to infect Apple iPhones.
The virus, which can spread from phone to phone, changes the iPhone's wallpaper to a photograph of 1980s singer Rick Astley - best known for his hit Never Gonna Give You Up.
The wallpaper features the words "Ikee is never gonna give you up".
However, the virus can only infect phones which have been jailbroken by their owners. Jailbreaking allows the owners to run non-Apple approved applications on their phones.
Ashley Towns, a 21-year-old TAFE student who lives with his family in Wollongong, south of Sydney, told ABC News Online he created the virus to raise the issue of security.
"When people jailbreak their phone, it allows them to install a service on their phone called SSH," he said.
"Generally you should always change your password after setting up on the iPhone as all iPhones use the same password.
"This virus pretty much exploits people's laziness to change their password."
He says his efforts prove that anyone could easily hack into an iPhone.
"I think to raise awareness for one, somebody with more malicious intent could have done anything - read your SMSs, go through your emails, view your contacts, photos - anything," he said.
Mr Towns says he is unaware if he is breaking any law by starting the virus.
"I've been informed that I may have broken some, but not being a lawyer I do not know," he said.
"The virus itself is not malicious and is not out to hurt people. It's just poking fun and hoping waking people up a little."
He says it is the first virus of its kind.
"Yes, especially the first that spreads from phone to phone," he said.
Mr Towns says he does not know how many people the virus could affect.
"Due to the nature of it, it's kind of hard to tell, I know my phone hit about 100 alone but from there I have no idea," he said.
But he says apart from changing the wallpaper on a user's phone, the virus is not harmful and quite easy to get rid of.
"[It does] nothing malicious at all, it basically only changes their wallpaper to Rick Astley," he said.
He says it takes a couple of minutes to remove by simply changing the phone's password and deleting a few files from the phone.
Mr Towns says he can prove that he created the virus by postings on Twitter made by him under the same name that was in the source code.
He says the original source code also had his email in it, but Google code removed it.
iPhone/Privacy.A Virus Hits Jailbroken iPhone
November has proved tough for jailbroken iPhone users as they twice came under attack by hackers. First one which we did warned you about was when a Dutch hacker tried to access jailbroken iPhones through SSH in his native country Netherlands. He was successful in sending totally off guarded users a message that read, "Your iPhone’s been hacked because it’s really insecure! Please visit doiop.com/iHacked and secure your iPhone right now! Right now, I can access all your files.". The second development was an attempt by an Australian who successfully injected a worm called “ikee” into jailbroken iPhones whose users forgot to change their root password for SSH. Victims of ikee virus were astonished to find their home screen background automatically changed to that of Rick Astley. ikee virus spread like a chain reaction from iPhones on one cellular network, to iPhones on other.
In the first case, the Dutch hacker regretted his action and reverted everything back, whereas in the second case, it was simply an experiment by the young Aussie whose worm ikee did not do any harm to the victims iPhone. All these attacks had one thing in common, they were targeted towards jailbroken iPhone users who were using the default root:alpine username/password combination. In our earlier post we had already recommended you all on
how to secure and
how to protect your iPhone against such vulnerabilities.
Previous attacks did not do much harm but this new one which is identified as iPhone/Privacy.A virus carries alot more risk. As reported by
MobileCrunch, the computer security firm Intego has identified the truly malicious malware named iPhone/Privacy.A that targets jailbroken iPhones with default user/password combo and is probably the first harmful one of its kind. The virus in question gives a hacker complete access on the victim’s iPhone. The hacker can access and copy any user data from the jailbroken device, including emails, contacts, calendars, photos, SMSs, videos, in fact any data the hacker wants.
Intego
explains iPhone/Privacy.A Virus in more detail as follows:
Hackers using this tool will install it on a computer – Mac, PC, Unix or Linux – then let it work. It scans the network accessible to it, and when it finds a jailbroken iPhone, breaks into it, then steals data and records it.
This hacker tool could easily be installed, for example, on a computer on display in a retail store, which could then scan all iPhones that pass within the reach of its network. Or, a hacker could sit in an Internet café and let his computer scan all iPhones that come within the range of the wifi network in search of data. Hackers could even install this tool on their own iPhones, and use it to scan for jailbroken phones as they go about their daily business.
It is highly recommended that you change your iPhone’s default SSH mobile and root password now. A complete step by step guide on how to change your jailbroken iPhone’s SSH password can be found here.
You can follow us on twitter to keep yourself updated on all the latest jailbreaking and unlocking releases.
Join The Community