Iphone plagued by Rick Astley
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL phone in the world is being plagued by a bad case of the Rick Astleys.
A fairly basic hack of the gadget has been carried out twice now. The first hack came from a Dutch bloke who told Apple fanbois to send him €5 "or else he would continue to annoy them", but the latest is probably the cruellest.
Reports claim that there is a a worm that replaces the phone's default wallpaper with a picture of Rick Astley, the British pop singer whose song "Never Gonna Give You Up" as been an inspiration. We are not sure for what, but we are certain it is not nice.
The photo is accompanied by the message "ikee is never gonna give you up" and the antivirus outfit Sophos tells us that it is quite difficult to remove.
Of course those infected deserve to be hacked. They have taken the perfected software of the great god Steve Jobs and installed jailbreaking software. This software allows people to use the Jesus phone on networks unblessed by Steve and therefore removes them from his divine protection and into hacking hell.
The virus only spreads by searching an infected phone's contacts to find other jailbroken Iphone users who have installed the Unix software SSH (secure shell) but haven't yet changed their passwords from Apple's default root password. For the record, Apple's default password on the Iphone is currently "alpine".
Sophos says that it hasn't heard of any occurrences of the worm outside Australia, and that while it doesn't appear to do anything worse than irritate users, it highlights the problems that those who disobey the word of Steve Jobs face with basic living.
For it is written that they who shall disobey Steve shall be cast into a world that is grey and Dell like and then be forced to buy software from Microsoft. There shall they gnash their teeth and hear Coldplay on their Ipod not.
The more cynical in the world might even suggest that Apple might have a vested interest in releasing such viruses into the wild to keep the faithful in check. Of course that would be stupid, and anyway everyone knows only Microsoft products have viruses and worms.
Still it could have been a lot worse. The virus has only been seen in Australia, and it could have come packed with a Celine Dion wallpaper and ringtone.
Then the world as we know it would have ended. µ
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That's what smug gits get when they think that they're safe from viruses/worms/trojans.
The people who are going to be hit by this are the ones who are smart enough to jailbreak their phones but are dumb enough to leave sshd running with the default root password.
my imaginary venn diagram shows a small overlap here, i doubt many people will be affected.
Buh Buh but they said on the TV that apple/fisher price toys didnt get viruses. Does this mean they were, gasp, lying.
I cant wait to see the adverts.
#1 Hello Im Rick Astley
#2 .... And Im a P.C.
Your headline should read: "Only *JAILBROKEN* phones get virus".
If you don't illegally jailbreak your phone... you will NEVER get this virus.
Why do so many of the articles here have VERY misleading headlines... and then buried
deeply in the text... you'll see that only jailbroken phones are affected?
Time to change the password for security reasons. Download via Cydia mobile terminal, launch it and type in passwd. It will prompt you for the old password and the new one.
Once done, type in login and it will bring you to the root. Type in passwd again, and chang ethe password in there too. Once done, you have just change both your mobile and root.
Oh please, spare us your lawful good attitude, it is NOT illegal to do whatever you want to something you own.
And VERY misleading?
crap.
A VERY misleading headline would be "Drunken elephant in space causes IPhone's to rickroll their owners!!!1!"
I got a worm downunder in me meat, potato and bean pasty. All because of trying to eat like a king for three measley quid. Woe is me! No more admiring sticky buns for me. Now all the secret security iButt services hold a record of my contacts, rather than the actual contents of what I say, because I never say anything of note. Go figure.
Repent now or reap the sanpinch!
Funny thing is I quite like that Rick Astley song, think he was vastly underestimated, and as for Celine Dion, see her in concert then get back to me, she is awsome.
Does it happen to Nokia phones :)
Considering they are dumb enough to leave a default root ssh password they deserver everything they are getting.
it's not hacking they are doing it's being dumb.
What can you expect from apple fans?
Whenever I think of Celine Dion, that song springs to mind...followed by a scene from the original Resident Evil film. Strange, yes, but all because of a wonderful flash writer by the name of Knox.
See this part of his silly dub of it for yourselves if you've a random sort of humour:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/113726
"The music is making me melt!"