iPhone Worm Author Offered Job

The early worm catches the bird

The creator of the worm that recently attacked jailbroken iPhones has been rewarded for his efforts by an Australian App development company.

The Ikee worm hit two weeks ago and changed the wallpaper of affected phones to a shot of Rick Astley accompanied by the words “Ikee is never going to give you up”.

Sophos.com published a portion of the worm’s source code, revealing that it contained comments from the author berating jailbreakers for failing to properly protect their phones from similar attacks.  Many ignored the advice to change their root user passwords from the default, “alpine”, and though it was not malicious, the Ikee worm demonstrated just how easy it was to hack into unprotected jailbroken handsets.

Ashley Towns, 21, revealed via his Twitter account that he has been given a job by Mogeneration, who make apps for Android handsets, Palm Pre and Blackberry devices as well as iPhones.

The question is: should hacking be seen as a glorified job application?  Is it right that we reward mischief makers with monthly salaries?  A second iPhone worm appeared just a few days ago with darker overtones, targeting users who have accounts with Dutch bank ING, and some believe that the Ikee worm was used as a template.