Unwittingly, the young geek that developed a bug that targets unlocked iPhones, may have just been doing Apple a big favor! After all, Apple have been trying everything in their considerable arsenal to stop people from jailbreaking their iPhones – including trying to make it illegal to jailbreak an iPhone.
Unfortunately for iPhone owners that have unlocked their iPhones, the computer geek from Down Under released the code for his bug into cyber space. And now – mere weeks later – another virus has been developed, also attacking iPhones that have been jailbroken.
The virus was identified by software security firm Sophos, which has named it “Duh” after a title identified in the software’s own source code. The company has warned jailbroken iPhone users to secure their devices. While the virus has apparently not yet been activated, infected phones are at risk of being used by hackers in order to gain private information, such as bank details, and use the phone’s broadband – possibly sending some user’s charges sky high.
It is not entirely clear how many iPhones have been jailbroken. Pinch Media stats (see below) suggest somewhere between 15 and 22% of iPhones have been jailbroken.
Now Pinch Media provide a lot of statistics for App developers – so that they (the developers) can keep tabs on downloads of their Apps from iTunes. As a result, they have been able to show that many Apps are being pirated (see our next post for more on this). But they are also able to show how many iPhones that are downloading Apps, have been unlocked.
Clearly, the number of iPhones that have been jailbroken are a significant thorn is the side of Apple – as they represent potentially lost customers from their iTunes store.
So, as we said at the start, these new bugs may be a problem for people with jailbroken iphones, but they may well be throwing parties over at Apple!