Prank-worm changes victim's wallpaper to show singer - diabolical!
Do you like '80s music, live in Australia, and own a cracked iPhone? If so, then this may be the worm for you. Ikee, the first iPhone worm ever, is infecting some of Apple's nifty devices down under.
Ikee doesn't do anything bad on its own, but anyone who "modified" their iPhones to run unauthorized software is at risk of having their wallpaper changed. Seems that's all Ikee was meant to do: switch the victim's display to show Rick Astley before seeking other iPhones. Since this only works on jailbroken devices, not a whole lot of people have been infected, namely only those who are running the Unix utility "Secure Shell," or SSH, with the default password "alpine."
Security experts are, however, concerned that the worm could be modified to steal information or perform other dangerous tasks. "There is a real danger that someone could take this code and make it do something malicious," said Graham Cluley, a tech with security vendor Sophos.
The culprit turned out to be 21-year-old Ashley Towns, an unemployed programmer from Wollongong (worst name ever). Towns claims it was meant to be a prank and he "wasn't expecting it to get as far as it did." He also explained in an online interview that the worm was meant to prove a point, that people ought to change the default iPhone password or risk an infection like Ikee (or worse).
Needless to say, Towns has gotten some mixed responses from Australia's iPhone users. This does have experts and the community a little worried after an incident last week, when a Dutch hacker began breaking into vulnerable iPhones and then demanded €5 (equal to $7.43 USD) in exchange for the solution.