Australian created first virus to infect the iPhone

The first iPhone virus has been created by a 21-year-old Australian student, Mr Ashley Towns from South Sydney.

The virus, which can spread from phone to phone, changes the iPhone’s wallpaper to a photograph of singer Rick Astley – best known for his hit Never Gonna Give You Up in the eighties.

The wallpaper features the words “Ikee is never gonna give you up“.

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.

“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.”

With the creation of this virus, it is proven 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.

The virus does nothing malicious.  All it does is to change 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.

With this first virus on the iPhone, it may prompt many more hackers to start developing similar threats on the iPhone in the future.

Hopefully this will not get out of hand to the point of being annoying.