Apple’s iPhone has a worm, 3 million at risk

November 13, 2009 | By Surur

iworm

With what must have been startling rapidity what started out as a proof of concept exploit of jailbroken iphones has turned into a security nightmare for iPhone owners, with the worm, called iPhone/Privacy.A having the ability to allow hackers to connect to any jailbroken iPhone, act silently and retrieve e-mail messages, SMS messages, calendar appointments, contacts, photos, music files, videos, along with any other data recorded by by iPhone apps.

An estimated 3.2 million iPhones are vulnerable to this exploit, and while mitigating steps, such as changing the root password, is available, this is said to break many applications designed for jailbroken iPhones which are written to take advantage of a hardcoded password. As a mitigating step it also of course leaves those iPhones vulnerable to dictionary attacks commonly used to attack machines on the internet.

Jailbraking iPhones is relatively common, as it is the only way to access needed functionality like multi-tasking and desirable features such as customizing the user interface.

At present there are no antivirus applications for the iPhone.

About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged apply, iphone, security, virus, vulnerability

http://intensedebate.com/people/j2inet j2inet

Is this another SSH exploit or something that doesn't need SSH to execute?
laxity

Its a variant of the ssh exploit again. It only affects people who have jailbroken their phones AND installed ssh (optional) AND forgot to change the default password. So I doubt that this will really affect that many people to be honest.
http://twitter.com/kanzlr @kanzlr

and you have to have ssh running all the time.
http://intensedebate.com/people/JKingDev JKingDev

So is it really a worm? Or are they just ssh'ing into jailbroken iphones with ssh installed and taking advantage of users who keep the default password?
laxity

It is a worm because it spreads over wifi and 3G networks to find other vulnerable phones. It also collects data from the phone and sends it somewhere.
http://www.avianwaves.com Parrotlover77

Hmm. I thought Windows got worms and viruses because Microsoft is the suxors. You mean that when a product as a massive market penetration it really does become a target for malware? Wow! Right now Mac users heads are exploding.
http://intensedebate.com/people/seika seika

In the other hand, if this only affects jailbroken device, Apple must be happy now.
More discouragement for peoples who want to break free from their control without them having to get dirty.
yolona

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