iphone virus ikee

I got an email from The Laddie this morning about this BBC article with the headline "Worm attack bites at Apple iPhones". It starts

The first worm to infect the Apple iPhone has been discovered spreading "in the wild" in Australia.

The self-propagating program changes the phone's wallpaper to a picture of 80s singer Rick Astley with the message "ikee is never going to give you up".

At this point many iPhone owners may be fearful that their cherished device may be susceptible but if you read on you find out that

The worm, known as ikee, only affects "jail-broken" phones, where a user has removed Apple's protection mechanisms to allow the phone to run any software.

So if you have an unmodified iPhone you are perfectly safe from this code. But the BBC refuse to let that get in the way of a decent scare story. The article continues

Experts say the worm is not harmful but more malicious variants could follow.

"The creator of the worm has released full source code of the four existing variants of this worm," wrote Mikko Hypponen of security firm F-secure.

"This means that there will quickly be more variants, and they might have nastier payload than just changing your wallpaper."

More variants 'could' follow, they 'might' have a nastier payload.

So how do you avoid this virus? By not modifying your phone or by changing the default system password. The only victims of the virus are those who think they know what they are doing