TextPK Blog » iPhones

New Worm Shows The Dangers Of iPhone Jailbreaking

ahmed — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:07:32 +0000

Not long after the first proof of concept for iPhone malware surfaced, a piece of genuine malware for the iPhone has been spotted in the wild. For the overwhelming majority of iPhone users, this really isn’t much of a problem. Phones which have been activated and updated through iTunes are in no way vulnerable to either attack. Only phones which have been jailbroken and equipped with SSH are subject to the attack, which can be thwarted by changing the SSH password from the default.

But how do you change the SSH password? And what is the SSH default password anyway? If you have to ask yourself these questions, you may want to give some serious thought to restoring your jailbroken iPhone to its original settings. Running a jailbroken iPhone might not be for you.

In the early days, jailbreaking was performed by users who wanted to run third party apps on their iPhones. It was really the only way to get software installed and running until the App Store opened up. As jailbreaking became more popular, the process was streamlined and made much, much easier to do, This, however, glossed over the fact that you were performing a fairly serious modifaction on your phone, one which released Apple’s own security protections. If you aren’t very aware of what this means and how you can deal with it, then jailbreaking your iPhone probably isn’t be best idea.

That’s not to say that I think jailbreaking your iPhone is wrong or dangerous on its own, if you know what you’re doing. Many of those who do run jailbroken phones are well aware of the danger of leaving a default password in place, and most of those users have long since closed up such a hole. Others, however, have jailbroken their handsets without really understanding what they were getting into, and perhaps this should serve as a wakeup call for those users to either read up on managing a jailbroken iPhone, or get back behind Apple’s walled garden.

China Sold 5,000 iPhones Since Launch

ahmed — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:48:14 +0000

Even though there was a lot of excitement over the iPhone coming to China, there were not a loG of people waiting in line to make a purchase. According to a report, China Unicom has only managed to sell 5,000 iPhones since it started shipping last Friday, which is not a lot if we consider China’s 1.3 billion population.

However, the carrier seems to be pleased by the results; “We are satisfied with iPhone sales so far, and we aim to have an additional 1 million new 3G subscribers each month in the near future,” said China Unicom Chairman Chang Xiaobing.

In August, Unicom signed a three-year non-exclusive deal to sell Apple’s iPhone in China, looking to boost the launch of their 3G services.

World’s First iPhone Virus Spreading in the Wild

ahmed — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:46:24 +0000

IT security and data protection company Sophos, has warned iPhone users of the world’s first iPhone virus that is spreading in the wild in Australia. The virus can only infect users who have “jailbroken” their iPhones in order to allow themto run applications that have not been approved by Apple.

The virus , dubbed the ikee worm, breaks into iPhones, changing their lock screen wallpaper to an image of 1980’s pop star Rick Astley with the message: “ikee is never going to give you up”. The worm, which appears so far to be confined to Australia, is capable of breaking into jailbroken iPhnoes if their owners have not changed the default password “alpine” after installing SSH. The first indication that anything is wrong with your iPhone is if you see a picture of Rick Astley.

Fortunately the worm doesn’t do anything more malicious than that – it doesn’t steal information, access your emails or snoop on your calls. But the source code has been made available on the internet – meaning other hackers could create more dangerous versions of the worm.

Ashley Towns, 21 year old student from New South Wales, claims that he created the worm out of “boredom”, He said, he fount it “stupid” that he fount 26 out of 27 accessible iPhones he tested were vulnerable, as they had not changed their password from the default.

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. Businesses also need to ensure that they don’t have staff who are endangering corporate data by running insecure smartphones.

A Sophos survey has revealed that 97% of people believe the iPhone will suffer from further virus attacks in the future.