New iPhone worm is more serious

Following the first ever iPhone “harmless” worm Ikee which invades jailbroken iPhones and swaps the wallpaper with an image of  80’s pop star Rick Astley and the words “Ikee is never gonna give you up”, comes a second worm ever, now hitting the Netherlands.

The new worm is specifically targeting people in the Netherlands who are using their iPhones for internet banking with Dutch online bank ING Direct. It redirects the bank’s customers to a look-a-like site with a log-in screen.

The creator of the Ikee worm said he wrote the program to raise security awareness. He says, his intent was not malicious but it could be just a matter of time before hackers find a way to take advantage of the security hole of jailbroken iPhones. And he was right.

The new worm is more serious than the first because it can behave like a botnet. This means the phone can be accessed or controlled remotely without the permission of its owner.

“It’s the second iPhone worm ever and the first that’s clearly malicious – there’s a clear financial motive behind it,” F-Secure research director Mikko Hypponen told the BBC.

While there might be advantages to jailbreaking the iPhone, there are also risks especially for users who have installed SSH and did not change the default password “alpine”.

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