After the two relatively harmless SSH worms to hit the iPhone it was only a matter of time before someone would use the security hole for malicious intent. We must point out that this worm can only infect Jailbroken iPhones with the OpenSSH app installed, and the advise is to ensure you change the default password immediately or uninstall the app if you don’t use it.

The previous worms were just a stunt to warn users of OpenSSH, that their phones were unsecure by harmlessly changing the wallpaper. The second worm specifically changed it to the portrait of the singer Rick Roll which has now become an internet gag for being caught out or punk’d.

This new infection is far more dangerous, with the ability to steal important information from the iphone, possibly from a banking app, but also has botnet functionality to recruit other infected iphones for botnet attack. This new worm is only the tip of the iceberg where the harm is only limited by the imagination of the attacker.

The simplest of fixes it to remove the OpenSSh app as mentioned before or to change the SSH default password of  ’alpine’ to something new. Details on how to do this can be found HERE.

Remember that these worms can only affect Jailbroken iPhones with OpenSSH with the default password set!