{"id":49174,"date":"2009-11-26T10:24:11","date_gmt":"2009-11-26T15:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theappleblog.com\/?p=36444"},"modified":"2009-11-26T10:24:11","modified_gmt":"2009-11-26T15:24:11","slug":"crime-doesn%e2%80%99t-pay-except-when-you%e2%80%99re-rick-rollin%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/49174","title":{"rendered":"Crime Doesn\u2019t Pay, Except When You\u2019re Rick Rollin\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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iPhone Malware has been getting an awful<\/em> lot of coverage lately, hasn\u2019t it? I\u2019m sorry to add to it, but sophos.com reports<\/a> that the author of the Ikee iPhone worm has (somewhat predictably) earned himself a nice new job for his troubles.<\/p>\n

Ashley Towns is twenty one years of age, Australian, sports a fair bit of lip-and-nose-metalware and is also the latest employee of mogeneration<\/a>, a company that specializes in iPhone application development.<\/p>\n

The Ikee worm was widely reported as the world\u2019s first iPhone worm. It affected only iPhones that had been jailbroken, replacing their wallpaper with an image of 80s pop sensation Rick Astley and the headline text \u201cIkee is never going to give you up.\u201d (Whether that makes it malicious or not depends entirely on your opinion of that coiffed crooner.) <\/span><\/p>\n

While Ikee didn\u2019t do anything too nasty, an understanding of the precise security weakness the worm exploited was shared quickly on the Internet via widespread reporting in the tech press. Only a matter of days later, the Duh worm (also known as Ikee.B) was found in the Netherlands. Researchers discovered the Duh worm was based largely on Ikee, exploiting the same weak-password method; however this variant of Ikee was much more sinister, acquiring iPhone owners\u2019 online banking information.<\/p>\n

Of course, Towns\u2019 can\u2019t be held responsible for the Duh worm, but would Ikee.B have existed if not for Ikee? Didn\u2019t Towns open the door for opportunistic malware authors looking for a way to take advantage of less diligent iPhone jailbreakers? Furthermore, is it appropriate he has been rewarded for his actions?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that age-old argument; should malware authors be punished with heavy fines and jail sentences, or should they be gainfully employed by security companies, where their mad programming skillz can be used to benefit society?<\/p>\n

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