Adam DesAutels

First iPhone Virus Strikes – Are You At Risk?

Thomas Petty on 11 16, 2009

It was reported last week that some iPhones in Australia were infected with the so-called “ikee” virus. Some people woke to find the wallpaper on their phones changed with an image of the 1980’s singer, Rick Astley. The image also had the words, “ikee is never going to give you up”. The virus is actually a type of worm that then scans the iPhone network for other vulnerable phones to infect, thus propagating itself through the network.

Are you at risk?

The only phones that were attacked were those that had been modified with “jailbreak” code to unlock the restrictions that Apple puts into the operating system. There is an underground network of programmers who have written software that allows you to install a modified version, or “patches” to the operating system. It frees your phone from AT&T (in the USA), thus code-named “jailbreak” software, and allows you to install applications that aren’t approved by Apple.

By installing a special type of software called SSH (Secure SHell), phones with jailbreak code on them are vulnerable to being hacked if the user didn’t bother to change the root (administrative) password to something else. The default SSH iPhone password is “alpine”, and the virus scans the phone network for phones that haven’t had their password changed.

Fortunately, this virus wasn’t a destructive one. The author even notified hacked phones via text message that their phone had been hacked because it isn’t secure.

A Moving Target

Apple has been trying to stay ahead of the “jailbreak” hackers ever since the first generation iPhone came out. That phone’s operating system was reportedly “very easy” to crack. Apple continues to patch their iPhone operating system with regular, free updates to try to stay ahead of the hackers, but it’s a very difficult moving target.

There has been an ongoing debate about whether Apple should continue to control it, or make it more “open” to allow anyone to modify the operating system and installed programs. After all, we all have computers that allow us to install whatever we want whether we have approval from Microsoft or Apple. Some people say it’s like having Ford tell you that once you buy their car, you can’t repaint it, buy rims or muffler mods, or use any fuel but “Ford-approved gasoline”. It’s unclear if the protections are to protect AT&T’s revenue stream and Apple’s other preferred carriers, or if there are security protections in place “for our own good”.

There are lots of open-source examples, Linux being one of the most successful versions of UNIX. As thousands of programmers continue to modify the code, they collectively make it stronger and more robust. DotNetNuke is another version of the .Net Web platform that is completely free. It continues to grow and get more secure.

Draconian Control or Complete Freedom?

Personally, I think there’s a balance here. After all, this is America, right? We all know that the Mac is a very stable operating system that has been remarkably virus and problem free. But we’re free to install applications, make modifications, and we can hook it to any network we want to – wireless or wired. (By the way I’m a Windows PC myself.)

As our phones become smarter and more network-enabled, it’s clear that the lines blur between our PC or Mac and a mere “phone”. After all, they are Wi-Fi-enabled, have an IP address just like my PC, and scan for wireless networks whether I’m in the office, at home or at Starbucks. We feel that we should be free to do with our computing devices what we want.

I saw one (albeit unsubstantiated) post that said that France has multiple carriers upon which the iPhone will work, and they have a 40% market share of the phones. In the USA, the iPhone accounts for 10% of the users.

It would be an interesting exercise for Apple to actually work in tandem with the folks who are jailbreak coders and have the best of both worlds. Pay them to help build a rock-solid operating system, but give the users (us mere mortals) the freedom to choose between carriers, applications (approved or not), and do what we want with our own personal devices without having to sign up for a two year contract.

Meanwhile, I will keep my non-jail broken phone with my AT&T contract, because that’s what I can get. Somehow I don’t think my liberties are being trampled upon too severely.
What are your thoughts?

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Read more from Thomas Petty at: Bay Area Search Engine Academy and on Twitter

Thomas Petty is President of the Bay Area Search Engine Academy. He teaches SEO and internet marketing classes in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento, California.

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