First Iphone Trojan

[_Lee_]

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39291979,00.htm 

Article said:

The first iPhone Trojan has been seen in the wild, according to security vendors.

The first warnings about the Trojan were posted on Saturday on the iPhone modification forum ModMyiFone.com, said security vendor F-Secure. When installed, the Trojan appeared to do nothing more than display the word "shoes", according to the ModMyiFone post.

However, when a user attempted to uninstall the malicious code, the application wiped files from the /bin directory, breaking "Erica's Utilities" such as sendfile. Erica's Utilities are a collection of command-line utilities for the iPhone, according to security vendor Symantec, which warned on Monday that the Trojan also overwrites OpenSSH, an open-source encryption protocol.

The Trojan, known as "iPhone firmware 1.1.3 prep", or "113 prep", is the first to be seen in the wild, according to Symantec researcher Orla Cox.

Is this trojan the start of much worse things to come or just another proof of concept that will not really have any effect?

Edited by _Lee_ on Thursday 10th January 21:08

[off_again]

Article goes on to say said:

"This is technically the first Trojan horse seen for the iPhone; however, it does appear to be more of a prank than an actual threat," Cox wrote in a blog post. "The impact of uninstalling the 'Trojan' would appear to be an unintended side effect."

So its not really anything to worry about.

To be honest, those people who install unknown applications onto a device which is supposed to be locked and prevents you from installing applications in the first place, needs to be extremely careful. Equally, for those people who have unlocked their iPhones and start to hack around with the internals, clearly have a reasonable idea as to what they are doing. Major threat? Not even close. Something to worry about? Well, not if you don't go around randomly installing applications that you have downloaded from the Internet without even some form of checking....

I mean, just like everything else - security systems are there to stop the unintended and accidental damage. It does not stop any threats and risks where people wilfully bypass what is present. Not much you can do to stop this and its the nature of the game. Would you download a random piece of software and install it on a Nokia Symbian phone? Would you do the same for a Windows Mobile device? Again, it takes blatant disregard for common sense to fall for these things....

[jimmyjimjim]

off_again said:

...it takes blatant disregard for common sense to fall for these things....

So, as a lot of buyers are going to be people who buy it for its looks and show off value (as well as the tech guys who buy it, hack it, but know what they are doing), it could be a major problem then...

[AndyWoodall]

jimmyjimjim said:

So, as a lot of buyers are going to be people who buy it for its looks and show off value

If thats the case then I very much doubt they are going to get into jailbreaking the phones anyway.

[tigger1]

Could be a major problem on a "system" that pretty much relies on the ability for people to be able to jailbreak it for it's popularity - and then makes all apps run as root.

As said above - this is "only" going to be a major problem for people who are following idiot's guides on the net, those who understand how the jailbreak works should, in theory, be ok.

[mft]

The impending SDK will doubtless allow secure 3rd party apps, perhaps removing the need to perform the jailbreak?

[AndyWoodall]

mft said:

The impending SDK will doubtless allow secure 3rd party apps, perhaps removing the need to perform the jailbreak?

I hope so, I'm not one for jailbreaking mine and I'm looking forward to the ability to download stuff, presumably through some sort of iTunes software store.

[Silent1]

mft said:

The impending SDK will doubtless allow secure 3rd party apps, perhaps removing the need to perform the jailbreak?

Only approved programs though, so you wont get any specialist kit, or for that matter anything apple deem not good.