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There have been some hackers out there targeting those with jailbroken iPhone lately. So far, none of these attacks have been really malicious, but you never know when they might turn ugly and I know I’d hate to be the one that gets hacked. The way these guys are getting into these phones is because the default password is rarely changed when someone jailbreaks their iPhone. I will admit, that I didn’t think about this myself, not until it was discussed on the iPhone Blog’s Live Podcast the other day. One of the other listeners, iMuggle decided to throw up a how-to on the subject. I am going to take that a step further with some purdy pictures.

This is only really needed for those that are jailbroken. You don’t have any concerns with this if you are not. The default SSH root password is alpine. Anyone that has accessed their iPhone via an SSH client probably already knows this, but so do the hackers. Read on to learn the quickest, easiest way to change your iPhone’s root password using MobileTerminal from Cydia.

1. Download MobileTerminal from Cydia.

2. After installing MobileTerminal, open the application.

3. Type su at the prompt.

4. You will be prompted for a password. Enter the default, “alpine”.

5. Now type passwd then hit return.

6. Type the new password and retype it again and you are all set.

7. Just to make sure, close MobileTerminal and restart the app. Enter your new password instead of alpine and make sure your a in.

You are now pretty safe. Congrats!

You can also do this using an SSH client on the desktop, just follow the same steps with whatever SSH client you use. Being the admin of my servers, I prefer the most simple of them all, PUTTY.