First Virus in the Iphone launched

The Rick Astley plan to take over the world has entered phase two.

iPhone users in Australia were invaded in the last few days by a photo of the 1980s crooner and the words “ikee is never going to give you up,” a reference to Astley’s greatest hit, “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

The image, installed by what’s purportedly the first worm to hit iPhones, replaced the wallpaper image phone owners normally saw when their handhelds entered lock mode.

A hacker who goes by the names “Ikee” and “Ikex” took credit for the attack, which affects only jailbroken iPhones whose owners have installed SSH and neglected to change the default root password, “alpine.” Once a phone is infected, the worm searches for other vulnerable phones in the user’s mobile network, according to security firm Sophos, which notes that four variants of the worm have been spotted so far.

The author, in notes inserted in the malware, chastises users for failing to read their manuals and change their passwords.


The author appears to have done little to cover his tracks. Sophos ran a few online searches under the hacker’s nick and found user profiles for someone similarly named who appears to be based near Sydney, Australia or Wollongong, New South Wales and may be connected to a Twitter account under the name ikeeex.

A 21-year-old student contacted through the Twitter account, who identifies himself as Ashley Towns, has taken credit for the worm, telling ABC News in Australia he infected about 100 phones but has no idea how far it has spread.

“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.”

He notes that a victim can remove the annoyance by changing the phone’s password and deleting a few files from the phone.

The hack follows on the trail of a similar one last week in the Netherlands where a Dutch hacker took over jailbroken iPhones and demanded 5 Euros to provide information to the victims to remove the malware and release their data.

The coding of the virus is shown as follows