Dutch iPhones held hostage

By Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 04 November 2009 05:42

Mobility

A number of iPhones in the Netherlands have been held hostage for a small ransom by a hacker. According to various reports, a number of jailbroken iPhones in the Netherlands have been remotely hacked.

The vulnerability arises when an iPhone is jailbroken but the owner does not change the default root password.

A hacker used port scanning across T-Mobile's dutch network to identify vulnerable handsets, and replaced the screen image with a message asking the owner to visit a certain web page.

That page - subsequently taken down - asked for payment of €5 via PayPal, and said that in return the iPhone owners would receive instructions for undoing the hack.

Those instructions were later published on another web site, and basically involve removing a plist file, restoring the original image file, and changing the root password.

It seems as if no real damage was done, although the hacker did claim to have sent SMSes from at least some of the affected iPhones.

The culprit has also reportedly refunded any payments received.

According to a message purportedly from the person behind the events, his or her motivation was to alert users to the possibility that the hack could be used by someone with malicious intent.

He or she also claimed that the hack would in most cases be automatically deleted within a day of installation.

Some observers aren't convinced.

"Some have suggested online that the hacker intended no malice in breaking into the iPhones and displaying the messages, but let's not beat around the bush about this. Unauthorised access and unauthorised modification of data is an offence in many countries around the world," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

A spokesperson for Intego said "if you have jailbroken your iPhone, you would do well to change the default ssh password. Again, Google will help you perform this simple operation. If you don't, any enterprising hacker can get access to everything your phone contains. You don't want that to happen."