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Another Jailbreak iPhone worm, BBC panics

by Bill Stiteler on Nov 23, 2009 at 03:52 PM

iphone wanted posterA second worm affecting jailbroken iPhones has been discovered, this one specifically targeting users of Dutch bank ING. It redirects users to a lookalike log-in page, presumably to steal their log-in information, according to the BBC.

Now, before everyone freaks out about iPhones being used for bank robbery (Are your children safe? We’ll tell you tonight at 10!), keep in mind that—like the previous iPhone worm—the user has to have SSH installed, and he can’t have changed the default SSH password. The BBC gets around to pointing this out (waiting until the 4th paragraph), before adding: “Users who have installed SSH and not changed the password are especially at risk.”

No, they are the only ones at risk. As sexy as a story about iPhones being used as a botnet is, and as many hits as I’m sure they’re getting, the simple fact is that this affects only a small subset of iPhone users. The security company that found the worm, F-Secure, correctly points out that it could be used as a botnet, but:

[F-Secure research director Mikko Hypponen] added although the number of infected phones was thought to be in the hundreds rather than thousands, the worm could jump from phone to phone among owners using the same wi-fi hotspot.

If the phones are jailbroken, if they have SSH installed, and if the users haven’t changed the default password.

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