If you haven’t jailbroken your iPhone though, there is no reason to worry.
The worm installs an image of 1980s singer Rick Astley with the words “ikee is never going to give you up,” a reference to the singer’s greatest hit, Never Gonna Give You Up. The image replaces the wallpaper owners see when the device enters lock mode.
The hacker, whose aliases include “Ikee” and “Ikex”, also inserted a note in the malware, chastising people for not reading their manuals and failing to change the default root password (alpine) for the installed SSH.
A 21-year-old student who identifies himself as Ashley Towns has taken credit for the creation of the worm. He appears to be based near Sydney, Australias nd has a Twitter account ikeex. He told ABC News Australia that he infected around 100 phones.
“When people jailbreak their phone, it allows them to install a service on their phone called SSH,” he said.
“Generally you should always change your password after setting up on the iPhone as all iPhones use the same password.
“This virus pretty much exploits people’s laziness to change their password.”
According to Towns, the worm can be removed by changing the phone’s password and deleting a few files from the phone.
“The virus itself is not malicious and is not out to hurt people,” he told ABC. “It’s just poking fun and hoping waking people up a little.”
Source: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/iphone-worm/
