Warning: iPhone worm starts RickRolling
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Blog, Mobile Phones, Security, Apple on
It was inevitable that the iPhone would eventually fall victim to the bad guys, and that inevitability has been realised as users of Jailbroken iPhones are starting to report being infected with an iRickRolling worm.
The ‘ikee’ worm was first spotted over the weekend in Australia, with users posting to online forums that their Jailbroken 3GS iPhones had changed from the default wallpaper to pictures of 80’s pop singer Rick Astley, he of ‘Never Gonna give You Up’ fame and the very same man who was the focus of the RickRolling Internet meme that started in 2007 and spread like wildfire during 2008.
One iPhone user reported that the wallpaper was actually accompanied by the text: “ikee is never going to give you up”.
Although there are, as of yet, no confirmed reports of the worm spreading outside of Australia, security researchers are sure it is perfectly capable of spreading to any Jailbroken iPhone as long as the default password has not been changed after installing SSH to the device.
Graham Cluley of Sophos says “Once in place, the worm appears to attempt to find other iPhones on the mobile phone network that are similarly vulnerable, and installs itself again”.
Unfortunately, analysis by researchers at Sophos Labs would suggest that there at least four variants of the worm code so far, the latest looking to hide behind a filepath which might suggest it is connected to the Cydia application.
Nothing about the worm suggests it has been written with malice in mind, and comments in the worm code itself tend to support this, and the whole Rick Astley thing is annoying rather than malicious. However, it must not be forgotten that this worm is accessing a device without permission and changing data upon it without permission, and breaking the law in many countries as a result.
It should also not be forgotten that as code variants continue to appear it is only a matter of time, and probably not that much of it, before a malicious party uses it to deliver a payload that is a whole lot more troublesome than Rick Astley.
There is no danger to iPhone users who have not Jailbroken their devices, nor to those who have changed the password from the SSH default of Alpine.
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