Be warned – new SSH worm loose

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!

Major improvements:

• The option to change graphical settings for increased performance in game on 1G and 3G devices.
• More responsive camera controls, including the ability to make the camera zoom further in for a closer look at the action.
• The ability to flip the game screen based on the orientation of your device.
• Improved Ninja Rope controls allowing even more death-defying rope stunts.
• The ability to unleash devastating weapons on your enemies from the safety of a parachute.
• Shorter thinking times of AI players.
• Highly improved back-flip and jump controls, including a new finger swipe method for back-flip to make sure you never accidentally jump worms into the water again.
• The facility to customise the game even further by creating your own enemy teams.
• General performance increases across the board.
• Quick shortcut to zoom out/in quickly with a press of the top left corner.

Other fixes:

• 1st gen devices crashed if left on the pause menu for a couple of minutes.
• Removed game saving/loading dialog message box.
• Upon opening the weapons panel and then closing it with the resume game option, the worm would occasionally jump.
• The pause game button could cause the worm to walk left if held down.
• Non-scrolling text in the AI created team menu.
• Added initial boot screen asking user to hard reset their device. This is to help users get the best experience/performance (due to fragmented iPhone memory problems).
• Various speech-bank issues where a foreign language was being incorrectly used.
• During the hot-seat time of a turn, commentary text such as ‘It’s a brand new turn!’ will appear underneath the darkened screen. The commentary text should appear when the turn has begun.
• Instance where a worm causes damage, but at the end of a turn no damage is taken.
• When viewing the How to Play options in game, the fire button and weapon panel buttons need to be hidden.
• Music incorrectly switching off when 20% power message has appeared.
• When the player quits a game, the in-game music carries on into the front-end. This is incorrect – it should be the generic front-end music playing instead.
• When the Holy HG comes to rest the particle effect obscures the weapon. The particle trial should only really be seen when the weapon is in motion.
• Various localisation errors fixed.
• Says heaths instead of health in how to play text.
• When the player selects a weapon, it would be useful for the commentary panel to display the weapon name for a couple of seconds.
• At present, if the player moves the camera and then aims with the reticule, the camera will re-centre on the worm. Fixed.
• Decompress music upon first launch in order to increase performance on older devices.

The first challenge that Team 17 had to overcome with the iPhone/iPod version of Worms was the control method – the devices clearly lack any physical controls. Other games have utilised semi-transparent controls overlaid on the game screen; Worms, however, uses a couple of on-screen buttons, two ‘areas’ (left and right) and the worms themselves. This isn’t instantly obvious and I had to actually read the help guide to discover what to do. Once these have been read though it is actually fairly simple to control.  To move your worm left press the left hand side of the screen, ditto for moving right; to jump tap the worm, to back-flip simply double-tap the worm; pinch/pull to zoom in/out; use 2-finger sliding to pan across the map; tap the crosshairs once to select and then aim by moving it with your finger; tap the ammo box on the bottom left to choose your weapon and then the target on the bottom right is for firing. That’s all there is really!

Now, onto the actual review. The game itself is relatively unchanged – you have a team of worms with which you try to kill off the other team(s) of worms one turn at a time. The choice of weapon is impressive ranging from bazookas, grenades and airstrikes to exploding sheep, banana bombs and kamikaze worms; during play you need to know what each weapon icon represents as there is no text to explain. You can, however, go to the help screen and get information on each of the weapons but this can be quite time consuming – a simple text description once your weapon is picked could clear up a lot of confusion. Also, on the subject of weapon selection, once a weapon is selected, the only thing you have to confirm your choice is the item the worm is holding – now neither the worms or the iPhone screen are particularly large and, at most, you have about 6 pixels worth of graphic to see what your worm is armed with! If you go back to the ammo selection then the current selection is not highlighted – a simple highlight would, again, clear this up.

Controlling the worms can, at times, be slightly tricky and/or frustrating; there is a certain art to the 2-finger scroll but it doesn’t take long to get the hang of it. Occasionally the double-taps (back-flip) aren’t registered and instead your worm will do a forward jump – this is usually OK though unless you are stood on a cliff edge and the resulting action propels your worm to his demise…

Despite the UI ‘issues’ the game is fun to play with cute (if you can call a worm with a bazooka cute) graphics and brilliant little sound clips – my all time favourite of ‘leave me alone’ has made it in there too! The background music is just that – music in the background that adds to the atmosphere of the game but certainly doesn’t get in the way of the action. The animation is very well executed especially when you consider the size of the worms and the animated text is a nice touch to the overall look and feel of the game. You can customise your own teams (the team’s name and 4 worms’ names, voices (English, French etc as well as Scouser, Angry Scot, Stiff Upper Lip and more!) and use these teams in the challenges or in the multiplayer mode. Multiplayer mode, at the moment, is limited to passing the device to the next person for their turn although Team 17 are working on adding ’3.0 features’ in particular multiplayer over bluetooth. They are also looking into the touch sensitivity and performance issues on some older devices.

There are a six different ‘themes’ for the levels ranging from cold, snowy landscapes to the red hot depths of hell. The levels themselves are also made up of random landscapes which adds even more variety. In the single player practise mode and in multiplayer mode you get to customise your own levels – choosing both the background and the type of landscape.

If you ever enjoyed worms you will enjoy the iPhone version. If you have never played it before then at £2.99 ($4.99 USD) it is a veritable bargain that is bound to please. While the UI issues may be annoying at times it is worth noting that Team 17 are not one-hit wonders; they have been around for a long time in the gaming industry and so updates will certainly be on their way! Members of Team 17 have already stated in their Facebook group that improvements to zoom are already in the next update as well as hints at some extra options to boost game speed on the older devices (such as switching off animated backgrounds).

UPDATE: v1.01 has been released to the AppStore – see here for full information.