Dutch hacker seeks out jailbroken iPhones for fame and fortune

by Donald Melanson Nov 3rd 2009 @ 8:23PM

Jailbreaking an iPhone certainly brings many benefits, but it's also frought with some peril, as amply demonstrated by a Dutch hacker who decided to go snooping around for vulnerable jailbroken iPhones in the Netherlands. While he apparently didn't actually swipe personal information or cause any damage, he was able to find some jailbroken iPhones with SSH running, which allowed him to display a message saying "Your iPhone's been hacked because it's really insecure! Please visit doiop.com/iHacked and secure your iPhone right now!" A noble gesture of a white hat hacker? Not exactly, 'cause that site demands €5 for the "fix" to let folks go back to using their phone securely -- or it did until the hacker apparently had a change of heart and posted the instructions for free, along with an apology for his misguided moneymaking scheme.

[Via TUAW]

Filed under: Handsets, Apple, iPhone OS

Tags: apple, hack, hacker, iphone, iphone 3g, iphone 3gs, iphone os, Iphone3g, Iphone3gs, iphoneos, jailbreak, jailbreaking, jailbroken, jailbroken iphone, JailbrokenIphone, SSH

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Techie @ Nov 3rd 2009 8:40PM

I guess the dutch was a deucebag.

Neutral

Corey @ Nov 3rd 2009 8:55PM

iPhone... we off that.

Neutral

Ted @ Nov 3rd 2009 10:02PM

Don't worry iPhone users....out of 9,985,745,443,235,980,302 apps, there must be at least ONE app that'll take care of this threat for you.

Neutral

klmsu19 @ Nov 3rd 2009 10:23PM

What threat? nothing was done. What the hell do people expect. When you hack a phone youre leaving some kind of back door open on ANY platform, iphone or other.

What an ignorant iphone-bashing comment

Neutral

Ted @ Nov 3rd 2009 10:59PM

The fact that you have to Jailbreak (not unlock) the iPhone from "BIG BROTHER" is in itself - a joke!

Neutral

mike @ Nov 4th 2009 1:23AM

This is only an issue because the jailbreak process has become so damn simple, anyone can do it. And installing SSH is even more simple. It definitely would not surprise me if 90% of jailbreakers with SSH installed have "alpine" as thier root password. The iPhone is a simplistic device with a large draw for semi-techies everywhere, and it just makes sense that something so obviously insecure as leaving the default password would go unacknowledged. Hell, even many "unix savvy" admins have no clue how to properly secure a protocol like SSH.

This is no more surprising than the large number of server admins that use the root account to do their bidding.

Neutral

dingdong @ Nov 5th 2009 5:15PM

"Hell, even many "unix savvy" admins have no clue how to properly secure a protocol like SSH. "
You're an idiot. If you can't setup SSH, you're not a *nix admin.

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