Unlocked iPhone Virus: ikee is never going to give you up.
Thousands of Aussies who had naughtily unlocked their iPhones were suddenly greeted with a new wallpaper on their mobil phones featuring the ‘80s one hit wonder Rick Astley (who became famous for the song “Never gonna give you up”. It’s a far prettier site than the image of the worm maker, Ashley Town, a 21 year old student from south of Sydney:
The infected iPhone screen, Rick Astley virus wallpaper image (top right), and Ashley Towns (bottom right).
The successful worm virus has sparked a debate about whether Ashley did owners of the unlocked phones a favor by exposing the security flaw. A comment in The Age actually revealed that, “This news article fails to mention that not only does it set up a wallpaper, it also fixes the vulnerability in the phones.”
If these Aussies had shanzhai iPhone clones, would they still have been vulnerable to the goth hackers’ attack? By unlocking phones and going with shanzhai versions, are you just asking for trouble?
There are reportedly iPhone clones that do run the real Apple OS X but more commonly, they run Windows Mobile and what we’re seeing more and more now is that the shanzhai are choosing Google’s free Android OS. So far Android has appeared to be pretty secure, although anti-virus software has been developed and launched for it anyway.
