[NPMUG] Reminder to NOT attempt to "jailbreak" your iPhone .... hacking is becoming an issue ...

[Dave Sevick]

http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/11/23/lightning-strikes-iphone-malware-malicious/

Lightning strikes again: iPhone malware gets truly malicious


Two weeks ago I reported on Ikee, the world's first iPhone worm which was spreading between jailbroken devices in Australia, replacing wallpaper with an image of Rick Astley.

As Chet reports on his blog, this weekend has seen the discovery of a new variant of the Ikee iPhone worm.

However, the important thing to realise about this new version of the worm is that it is reported to be much more malicious in intent.

The new worm is similar to the original Ikee worm (and the recently discovered iPhone hacking tool) in so much as it only infects jailbroken iPhones, where users have installed OpenSSH and not changed the default password ("alpine").

However, it is much more serious than the original Ikee worm because it is not limited to infecting iPhone users in Australia, and appears to be designed to steal information from users accessing online banking sites via their iPhone.

Two weeks is all it took for a jokey Rick Astley worm to be adapted into something apparently designed to steal money from innocent users.

Some may have thought that the Ikee iPhone worm was a one-off. Some people might have imagined that lightning wouldn't strike iPhones more than once - but they were wrong. And one thing is certain - you can be sure that if hackers find they can make money out of poorly-secured jailbroken iPhones, they will continue to attack them.

So the (rhetorical) question for Clu-blog readers is this - do you still feel the author of the original Ikee worm did iPhone users a favour? After all, it was him who released the source code of the Ikee worm, and gave the authors of this latest financially-motivated variant the template for infection.

We'll publish more information about this latest example of iPhone malware as it becomes available. In the meantime, if you have a jailbroken iPhone it might make sense to ensure that you have changed the default password.



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