iPhone worm could be used to create botnets

A second iPhone exploit has been identified by security vendor F-Secure, which claims the new worm has botnet capability and is more threatening than its predecessor.

Mikko Hyponen, chief research officer at F-Secure, said in a blog post that the new worm, like the first, affects jailbroken iPhones with SSH (secure shell) protocol enabled and unchanged default passwords. The Finnish security company has yet to give a name to the new threat.

Ikee, another threat that was discovered earlier this month, is said to infect vulnerable phones in Australia. When Ikee strikes, it alters the iPhone's wallpaper to an image of Rick Astley with the message "ikee is never going to give you up".

"The worm is not widespread, but it is much more serious than the first iPhone worm as it seems to try to steal information from the devices," Hyponen said about the new worm in the blog post.

For more on this story, see Second iPhone worm behaves like botnet on ZDNet Asia.