Second iPhone virus found, again targets jailbroken iPhones

Earlier this week, an Australian coder by the name of Ikee wrote an interesting iPhone worm targeting users with jailbroken iPhones — specifically those users who had not RTFM and changed their root password. The worm was programmed to scan the 3G IP ranges of the Telus, Optus, and Vodafone networks in Australia. Once a vulnerable iPhone was found, the exploit would change the wallpaper of said device to…Rick Astley. Respect. In an interview Ikee explains that his worm was designed as more of a warning shot than an attempt to compromise user data. Ikee had hoped users would be motivated to change their root password, which is set to “alpine” by default post-jailbreak, after seeing the consequences of a compromised root password. Fast forward to today, and a new anonymous coder has modified Ikee’s worm, and this new variant has less of that public service announcement feel to it. The modified strain, dubbed “iPhone/Privacy.A” by the online security firm Intego, is programmed to do several things: act silently and retrieve e-mail messages, SMS messages, calendar appointments, contacts, photos, music files, videos, along with any other data recorded by your iPhone apps. Currently details on where the worm is uploading the farmed data is scarce, and the threat of being infected is low. What’s our recommendation? If you have a jailbroken iPhone, change the root password. Maybe this is why Apple’s looking to secure their incredibly unsecure mobile operating system…

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