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How to Remove (Fix) iPhone Worm – ‘iKee’

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If your iPhone is jailbroken and if you see the below image as your home screen, it is time to tighten your seat belt security and remove iKee worm and fix your jailbroken iPhone.

A hacker who calls himself/herself iKex has recently created what apparently is the first iPhone worm, and it’s currently infecting jailbroken iPhones across Australia. The attacks, which researchers say are the world’s first iPhone worm in the wild, target jailbroken iPhones that have SSH software installed and keep Apple’s default root password of “alpine.”

ikee worm jailbroken iphoneIn addition to showing a well-coiffed picture of Astley, the new wallpaper displays the message “ikee is never going to give you up,” a play on Astley’s saccharine addled 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Once the iKee worm changes your wallpaper it tries to install itself on other jailbroken iPhones on the network. If you have been affected, luckily there is no harm done as this virus was more of an experiment than anything else.

This is how apparently the iKee worm operates:
Once an iPhone has been infected by ikee, it automatically starts searching for other iPhone’s on the cellular network that use the root:alpine username/password combination. Once it finds another vulnerable iPhone, it installs itself and begins the process again and this goes on like a nuclear chain reaction. ikee virus will disable SSH access on your iPhone and will change the background image to that of “Rick Astley” as can be seen in the screenshot above.

How to Prevent your iPhone from iKee Worm (and other similar worms in future)?
To protect your jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch from ikee worm attack or any other similar attacks in the future, you must change your default SSH password (that is “alphine“) now.

How to Remove iKee Worm and Change Default SSH Password in your jailbroken iPhone?
- Go to Cydia and search for MobileTerminal app and then install it on your iPhone. You can directly install it from here though. Once you have successfully installed MobileTerminal, reboot your iPhone.

- Start MobileTerminal app and type the following command to change the root password

login

Press enter. And then type

root

as your login and ‘alpine‘ as your current root password. After logging in, Type

passwd

Press enter.

- It will now prompt you to enter a new password (twice). Simply enter your desired new password again.

That is it. It should all be fine and now your iPhone should be free from ikee worm. Cheers :)

Let us hear how it worked for you.


Author: (Articles written: 562)

TechChunks is a Technology Geek, Web Entrepreneur, SEO Consultant and Social Media Evangelist. Prior to starting this blog, TechChunks has spent many productive years as a Software Engineer, Wordpress Blogger, Corporate Trainer, Frequent Conference Speaker and Workshop Leader. He has a special interest in "Problem Solving" and can be found hiking on weekends. !

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11 Responses to " How to Remove (Fix) iPhone Worm – ‘iKee’ "

  1. Thanks for the info
    .-= Rajesh Kanuri´s last blogpost >> Download Beta Version of Microsoft Office 2010 Professional =-.

  2. Tinh says:

    I do not care about this, maybe next year as I am using Nokia now. thanks anyway
    .-= Tinh´s last blogpost >> Earn Up To $100 With PayPal Wishlist on Facebook =-.

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  4. techprism says:

    Yes, iKee recently hit many of iPhones. It appears to be quite helpful for those who are still fighting it
    .-= techprism´s last blogpost >> One day Google AdSense Earning $29763.95 How much you can made? =-.

  5. Ben Lang says:

    thanks so much for the help!

  6. Pavan Somu says:

    Thanks for the information
    .-= Pavan Somu´s last blogpost >> Best Monetizing Plugins For Your Blogs =-.

  7. DarrenLIm says:

    hi

    i followed the way to change the password at moblie terminal, but the photo remains showing?any other way to remove it?

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