Australian admits creating first iPhone virus
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The virus can only infect phones that have been jailbroken by their owners. (ABC News: Giulio Saggin, file photo)
A 21-year-old Australian man has admitted creating what is thought to be the first virus to infect Apple iPhones.
The virus, which can spread from phone to phone, changes the iPhone's wallpaper to a photograph of 1980s singer Rick Astley - best known for his hit Never Gonna Give You Up.
The wallpaper features the words "Ikee is never gonna give you up".
However, the virus can only infect phones which have been jailbroken by their owners. Jailbreaking allows the owners to run non-Apple approved applications on their phones.
Ashley Towns, a 21-year-old TAFE student who lives with his family in Wollongong, south of Sydney, told ABC News Online he created the virus to raise the issue of security.
"When people jailbreak their phone, it allows them to install a service on their phone called SSH," he said.
"Generally you should always change your password after setting up on the iPhone as all iPhones use the same password.
"This virus pretty much exploits people's laziness to change their password."
He says his efforts prove that anyone could easily hack into an iPhone.
"I think to raise awareness for one, somebody with more malicious intent could have done anything - read your SMSs, go through your emails, view your contacts, photos - anything," he said.
Mr Towns says he is unaware if he is breaking any law by starting the virus.
"I've been informed that I may have broken some, but not being a lawyer I do not know," he said.
"The virus itself is not malicious and is not out to hurt people. It's just poking fun and hoping waking people up a little."
He says it is the first virus of its kind.
"Yes, especially the first that spreads from phone to phone," he said.
Mr Towns says he does not know how many people the virus could affect.
"Due to the nature of it, it's kind of hard to tell, I know my phone hit about 100 alone but from there I have no idea," he said.
But he says apart from changing the wallpaper on a user's phone, the virus is not harmful and quite easy to get rid of.
"[It does] nothing malicious at all, it basically only changes their wallpaper to Rick Astley," he said.
He says it takes a couple of minutes to remove by simply changing the phone's password and deleting a few files from the phone.
Mr Towns says he can prove that he created the virus by postings on Twitter made by him under the same name that was in the source code.
He says the original source code also had his email in it, but Google code removed it.
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