Jailbroken iPhone is hit by a virus

The first ever worm hit iPhones last weekend and infected a host of jailbroken iphones globally. Reports said infected iphones change the wallpaper to an image of Rick Astley, a pop icon of the 80′s. The worm is capable of breaking into jailbroken iphones if the owners have not changed the default password after installing SSH. Once in place, the worm appears to try to find other iPhones on the network that are also jailbroken sharing the same vulnerability and installs itself without the users knowledge.

On each installation, the worm – written by a hacker calling themselves “ikex” – changes the lock background wallpaper to an image of Rick Astley with the message:

“ ikee is never going to give you up.”

Once your iPhone, iPod Touch is jailbroken and installed with SSH, you must change your root user password from its default, “alpine”. Of course, this isn’t Apple’s fault — but jailbreakers will have to be a little more careful with the software they’re installing on their iPhones.

Good news though to iPhone users, the worm does not infect phones that have not jailbroken and SSH aren’t installed yet.

This report all the more give reasons to not jailbreak your iPhones and rather stick to Apple Security and culture.

What is jailbreaking?

Jailbreaking is a process that allows iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch users to run third-party unsigned code on their devices by unlocking the operating system and allowing the user root access. Once jailbroken, iPhone users are able to download many extensions and themes previously unavailable through the App Store via unofficial installers such as Cydia. A jailbroken iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch is still able to use the App Store and iTunes.[wikipedia]

Jailbreaking, according to Apple, can void Apple’s warranty on the device, although this is quickly remedied by restoring the device in iTunes.

Is Jailbreak similar to sim unlocking?

Jailbreaking is different from SIM unlocking, which, once completed, means that the mobile phone will accept any SIM without restriction on, for example, the country or network operator of origin.

2 Responses to “Jailbroken iPhone is hit by a virus”

Why iPhone users wanted to jailbreak their phones? | informasiatoday.info on August 24th, 2010 at 9:44 am

[...] photography gears, entertainment & lifestyle, and global environmental concerns Jailbreaking the iPhone becomes a very popular practice because users believe it gives them more benefits than [...]
bingo spelen online on June 18th, 2011 at 3:14 pm

it was very interesting to read and look through your post, i did not know anything about this before.

informasiatoday.info