Nov
13
Beware the Second iPhone Virus!
iPhone users, beware! Remember that iPhone virus from Australian Ashley Towns? Well, another hacker modified his fairly innocent warning and created its evil twin. Dubbed “iPhone/Privacy.A” by Integro, an online security firm, this modified strain is able to retrieve your emails, text messages, music, photos, videos and other personal data stored on your iPhone. Again, this worm only affects jailbroken phones. Intego spokesperson Peter James explains:
Unlike the ikee worm, which signals its presence by changing the iPhone’s wallpaper, this hacker tool gives no indication that it has invaded an iPhone. Hackers using this tool will install it on a computer — Mac, PC, Unix or Linux — then let it work. It scans the network accessible to it, and when it finds a jailbroken iPhone, breaks into it, then steals data and records it.
At the moment, there are no reports on how the gathered information from the virus will be used. But, since the virus was created to be invisible, an iPhone user may not know what hit him until it’s too late. For the small percentage (six to eight percent) of those with jailbroken phones, the advice is to be careful but don’t stress too much. The risk of being infected is apparently low. Be sure, however, to act on the lesson learned here though: change the root password on your iPhone!
