Privacy, Security & Virus Information

Sophisticated Malware Now Targeting iPhones

Recent reports have shown an increase in attacks on Internet mobile phone platforms, with the iPhone being a particular target in 2010. IPhone users with compromised devices are said to be particularly at risk.

A new worm that has been specifically programmed to target the iPhone was recently discovered and the internet security experts who were called in to examine the toxic software described it as the most sophisticated malware they had seen to date. They also concluded that it had been especially developed to attack the increasingly popular smartphone.

The malware, known as iBotnet.A, once it has infiltrated the iPhone will set out to steal the owner's online banking information, after which it is capable of spreading across a network and hijacking iPhones and iPod Touchs and even the latest iPads if its progress is not arrested in time. Experts say that iBotnet.A could be a spin off or a continuation of a similar iPhone worm which showed up in November of last year and produced some devastating results.

There is no doubt that iPhone users leave themselves especially vulnerable to virus infection if they "jailbreak" their device. Jailbreaking is the term that iPhone owners use to describe unlocking the smartphone to allow the installation of Apple unauthorized software. If they have and have a Secure Shell or SSH network protocol installed but has not bothered to change their default password.

This is the breakthrough that hackers are looking for as their malware can then change each infected device's root password and leave it liable to constant attack. Security experts have retraced the virus's source to an address in Lithuania, from where it can download new instructions and send data stolen from the infected iPhone back to hackers believed to be based in Holland.

The iBotnet.A worm can then propagate itself many times by first scanning its local network for other vulnerable devices to infect, as well as scanning dozens of IP address mostly in Europe but as far afield as Australia for other jail-broken iPhones.

The only way to that iPhone owners who decide to take the drastic step of "jailbreaking" their devices of protecting their personal information is to install the most powerful anti-virus software on the market, otherwise they will find themselves constantly exposed to viruses, each of them powerful than the one that came before it. That's progress!

 

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