First iPhone Worm Rickrolls Users

Since the Rickrolling phenomenon began, I’ve always found it to be funny as all get out. There’s something simultaneously diabolical and impish about the bait and switch tactic that has always put a smile on my face. It’s kind of like a cue to stop and smell the roses, especially when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi decides to get a piece of the rickroll action.

So I definitely found it highly amusing, when I saw a post on Engadget stating that a hacker by the name of ikex is terrorizing the owners of jailbroken iPhones in Australia. The first iPhone worm dubbed the ikee worm, exploits the fact that jailbroken devices using SSH have the same root password of “alpine”. Once an iPhone is infected, an image of 80’s singer Rick Astley replaces the wallpaper. Then it goes through the system looking for more jailbroken phones to roll on. iPhone owners who have kept their phones within Apple’s grid don’t have to worry about the worm and neither do jailbreak owners using NAT.

PCWorld has identified the hacker as 21 year-old Ashley Towns who said,”It was supposed to be a small prank i definitely wasn’t expecting it to get as far as it did.” He also said he wanted to bring people’s attention to the odious security oversight of not changing the password.

Somewhere Apple execs who have been trying to battle jailbreaking for awhile have to be smiling. These iPhone owners got a major pass on the fact that Towns was playing the role of the playful prankster instead of malicious malcreant. I guess the lesson here is either practice common sense and make security your first tech priority or don’t eff with Apple — whatever one suits your fancy.

What do you think Towns’ prank? Let us know in the comments section.