New iPhone worm spreads further, creates mobile botnet
The worm-ridden iPhone has just turned more rotten, with a new virus spreading from Australia and infecting iPhones in the Netherlands, Hungary, Portugal and Brazil, affecting thousands.
"After the 5 euro idiot, Ikee with Rick Astley and Intego’s privacy, this worm is doing really bad things," said Scott McIntyre, Security Officer for XS4ALL Internet BV.
The new worm can steal data, connects to its creators (apparently using a server in Lithuania) and gives them complete control over the phone. The worm also searches the SMS database, possibly for bank codes and installs itself in the start-up script. It then initiates a search for other vulnerable iPhones on the same network to spread itself further, often draining the iPhone battery in the process.
While this worm takes advantage of the default password SSH vulnerability in jaibroken iPhones, the attacks have obviously increased significantly in sophistication, making it likely that it will not be long before hackers take advantage from other vulnerabilities in the OS. The main saving grace is however that the iPhone OS, which was originally hackable simply by viewing an image in the browser, has been significantly hardened by Apple’s constant battle with the Jailbreaking community, a process which Apple has called illegal and which may ultimate rob iPhone users from being able to customize or multi-task on their devices.
Read more at Security.nl here.
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I havea little bit of sympathy for Apple, as this is the battle Microsoft has waged for years now. When you have a popular platform, it is much easier for malware developers to cause malware outbreaks. Microsoft learned this lesson and each generation of Windows is much more secure than the last. In addition, MS updates pirated versions of Windows, so as not to weaken the ecosystem as a whole.
I now never, ever, want to see Apple run a commercial touting Mac's better 'security' than Windows due to the presence of less malware. Since the iPhone supposedly runs some variant of MacOS X, so if that's any indicator on the security of MacOS X, Apple has a lot of work to do.
Apple, welcome to high OS penetration. Let's see if you can handle it as well as Microsoft has.
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If you're going to use an iPhone, you should just accept the fact that it comes with AT&T. If you're not prepared to use the device as intended, move along. If you're iPhone isn't jailbreaked, you're not going to run into this…
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Lennard Reply:
November 22nd, 2009 at 4:12 am
I'm not sure what you're getting at, are you saying that no one should write about this? should they just sweep it under the rugg as if nothing is going on? if it was written up at engadget or gizmodo would you have accepted it there? or is it because this site is a WinMo specific site you have a problem with it?
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benjitek Reply:
November 23rd, 2009 at 3:18 am
No a question, nor a debate… just an observation — thanks for stopping by
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This isn't really a problem with "an iPhone", but rather with "a jailbroken iPhone". While it's important to mention news of this nature, it is not until the last paragraph that the author implies that this only occurs with a modified iPhone, rather than the standard iPhone that most people are using.
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Lennard Reply:
November 22nd, 2009 at 5:54 am
I understand what you're saying, you're way better than that other guy up top. however, the paragraphs are pretty short and it's only 4. your wording made it seem as if it was a big article.
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Chris Reply:
November 22nd, 2009 at 9:48 am
It is a problem for the iPhone because Jailbreaking is a problem for the iPhone, one that is entirely Apples doing.
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manual_ Reply:
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:48 am
I disagree. It's like puting a post that shouts "You'll brick your WM device if you update rom". And clarifying in the last sentence that you only meant puting some heavily experimental custom cooked rom from a shady source. Its kinda embarassing that WM sites are so bent on reporting iPhones deficiencies. It almost seems like it's supposed to make WM look better than it really does. And especially posts like this, which, to be acurate should have "Jailbroken iPhone" instead of just "iPhone" in the header. That's not what I'd call a solid journalism.
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While I think this is an important news and Apple should finally learn its lesson, I think this news shouldn't be on WM-specific website. I mean, it sounds like we are laughing at them or something. I don't know. It has nothing to do with WM users. At least that's what I think.
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I don't have a problem with WMP running stories like this as it is important to give people the big news from the other side so we don't become too sheltered (although with all the trolls this is unlikely). I would expect there to be a story here covering big news on the next iphone in the future and maybe some info on major android updates or big releases.
You also have to consider that people are very interested in this iphone worm because i don't think it'll be too long until winmo has to deal with something like this, except in that case it probably wont be limited to a small proportion of phones.
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