AVOID TO GET THE FIRST VIRUS ON YOUR IPHONE

I wrote in another article about the "Ikee" worm attacking jailbroken unaltered root password iPhones.

http://www.articlesbase.com/cell-phones-articles/first-virus-in-iphone-1438450.html

It is obvious this is only the first in a series of attacks to be launched against these popular cell phones.

Apple iPhone is nothing but a small mini computer with a phone in it. This makes it voulnerable to attacks from malicious software makers.

The "Ikee" worm creater put the source code open on the internet for others to explore and to exploit as a starting point for more sophisticated worms and viruses to be used against the iPhone.

First you will need to download the Mobileterminal software;

http://cydia.saurik.com/package/mobileterminal

This is a distribution software for Unix software for iPhone OS 3. The software is written by Allen Porter.

Then you install this software and connect your iPhone to the PC and start the process of changing the root password according to these instructions;

http://cydia.saurik.com/password.html

Here is a little bit more information to help you protect your iphone to hacks.

A Dutch hacker demoed this week of how easy it is to gain access to an iPhone when it is jailbroken, running the SSH service, and has not had its default admin-level passwords changed.

These stories were a great reminder that we should all make a habit of changing the default passwords for the iPhone’s two primary admin accounts (usernames mobile and root) – as once somebody gains root level access to an iPhone, all sorts of bad things can happen.

Read on for some easy instructions on how to change your default passwords on the iPhone …

How To Change The iPhone’s Default Admin Account Passwords:

*** These instructions assume you are running iPhone OS 3.0 or above on your device – other firmware versions may vary in their default passwords.  You also, of course, need to be jailbroken, and running the SSH service if you wish to use one of the methods that connect to the iPhone via a PC to make the changes.

You can use applications on the iPhone itself or on your PC to make these password changes.  Please note – you only need to use one of these methods, not all three.

Here are three walk-throughs for three common apps on iPhone, Mac, and PC:

On the iPhone:

The app to use on the iPhone is called MobileTerminal and it’s available for free in the Cydia store.

Once you have MobileTerminal installed, launch it and you should see a prompt saying this or similar:

iPhoneName: ~ Mobile$

• At that prompt, type: passwd
• You’ll be prompted for the ‘old’ (current) password for the mobile user.  Enter this as the old password: alpine
• You’ll then be prompted to enter the new password – so just type in your desired new password.  Use good password principles if possible (long and stong).  You will not see characters appearing on the screen as you type – that’s normal, not a concern.
• You’ll then be prompted to re-enter the new password.  Do that.
• You should then be returned to the Mobile$ prompt that you started on when opening the MobileTerminal app.  There’s no success message to say the password was changed – but if you’re returned to the prompt and do not get an error, the change was successful.  And you’re done with change for the mobile account.
• The second primary admin account for the iPhone is called root – so now you need to change that as well.
• Type this to switch to the root user: login root
• You’ll be prompted for the root user’s current password.  Enter this: alpine
• Type this to start the password change routine again: passwd
• Enter the old password for root (it is ‘alpine’, same as for the mobile user) and enter your desired new password twice, just as you did for the mobile account

Done.

You should now have been able to change the password and your iPhone should be protected against at least 4 different variations of the "Ikee" worm launced during the last week.

However, you are not protected against any new variations of the worm or new types, so you are encouraged to follow closely on the internet security web pages to see any new development of virus and worm attacks on your iphone.