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.

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