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A new wrinkle has appeared in the smartphone security picture, as the first truly harmful worm has surfaced that effects jailbroken iPhones. This one is designed to steal passwords and financial details of people who log onto the website of the Dutch bank ING using an infected iPhone. ING is taking it seriously and will be placing a warning on the site, though since the worm redirects users to a fake site in order to phish their details (as well as intercepting SMS messages), I am not sure how effective that warning will be.

The worm is being called Ikee-B  and like the first Ikee makes use of an SSH backdoor on jailbroken iPhones. Ikee however just changed your wallpaper to a picture of Rick Astley. As horrible and as psychologically scarring as being Rickrolled can be, it doesn’t hold a candle to having your banking details stolen as Ikee-B does.

So far all the infections reported are restricted to The Netherlands, but Ikee-B could potentially affect an IP range that includes several other European countries as well as Australia.

Once a phone has been infected, the root password is actually changed by the worm (to “ohsh*t” according to reports and the iPhone is put into a botnet controlled in Lithuania.  Needless to say, users with Jailbroken iPhones are being STRONGLY urged to change their default root passwords from ALPINE, since that will end the threat.

One could say that if it can be blocked by such a simple precaution then there is no real threat at all from Ikee-B. However when you consider how little care people take with their PC passwords, it is unlikely that most people will worry about their smartphone password…until it is too late. That is what attacks like this count on.

It is safe to say that this escalation will not be the last, especially as the holidays will bring a surge of new iPhones and online activity.