Ikee iPhone Virus Warning
Posted on: November 9, 2009 by admin No Comments
Concerns are growing over what is being called the world’s first iPhone virus which has apparently been designed to attack cracked or jailbroken devices. At present the only confirmed cases or reports have originated from Australia.
Similar to the Rickrolling phenomenon of recent times, the virus, named “Ikee”, changes the users wallpaper or background to that of 80s pop singer Rick Astley with a caption that reads “Ikee is never gonna give you up”. This is possible because many people who have unlocked, cracked or jailbroken their devices and neglected to change the password from the default “alpine”.
Experts at security software manufacturer Sophos are saying that once the virus is effective it then proceeds in trying to identify other iPhones on the network that can be manipulated and then attacks them.
“This is a wake-up call to iPhone users around the world to take greater care about their security – especially if they jailbreak their phones,” said Sophos senior technology consultant, Graham Cluley.
“Businesses also need to ensure that they don’t have staff who are endangering corporate data by running insecure smartphones. Other inquisitive hackers may also be tempted to experiment, and could take the code of ikee and adapt it to have a more sinister payload.”
Sophos managed to establish that the source of the virus is a 21 year old Australian student from New South Wales. The student is said to have admitted starting the virus ina Twitter post and said the reason for doing so is because he discovered that 26 in 27 iPhones he examined were potentially susceptible because users had not changed their passwords.
F-Secure, a security firm based in Finland said
“The creator of the worm has released full source code of the four existing variants of this worm. This means that there will quickly be more variants, and they might have nastier payload than just changing your wallpaper or might try password cracking to gain access to devices where the default password has been changed”
To change your passwords use the below link provided by F-Secure.
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/cydia.htm
