Before a panic occurs, let me emphasize. The worm does not affect those who have not jailbroken their iPhones, and does not affect those who have not installed SSH. The people affected are those who have jailbroken their iPhones, installed SSH, and forgotten to change the default password. This give the worm unrestricted access to the iPhone. Originating in Australia yet rapidly spreading, as of the moment, the worm simply changes the user’s background to a picture of Rick Astley, amusingly, and then passes itself on to other iPhones. The worm, however, could end up being used for a much more malicious motion, much like the sleeping bear of the Conficker virus.

Sophos Labs writes:

"SophosLabs is analysing the worm’s code, which suggests that at least four variants have been written so far. One of the attributes of the latest variant (labelled the "D" version) is that it tries to hide its presence by using a filepath suggestive of the Cydia application.

The source code is littered with comments from the author suggesting the worm has been written as an experiment. One of the comments berates affected users for not following instructions when installing SSH, because if they had changed the default password the worm would not have been able to infect them."

The affected iPhones reportedly look like this (Batman off Whirlpool forums):

What do you think? Could this open the room for even more viruses for the iPhone? A certain ‘ikex’ may find himself with an Apple lawsuit.

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