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The virus is able to reset the phone wallpaper to display an image of Astley (a practice known as rickrolling) on “jailbroken” iPhones.iPhones across Australia lit up with the face of '80s crooner Rick Astley this week as a Wollongong TAFE student made international headlines for releasing the first virus to infect the popular smartphone platform.These phones are unlocked so users can use non-Apple applications or service providers, and only those who had failed to reset default security passwords were affected.The student, who lives in Wollongong with his family, told Computerworld that he had no particular vendetta against Apple, and had created the virus out of curiosity and boredom. Ashley Towns, the 21-year-old Australian who has taken credit for the high-tech stunt, wrote on his Twitter page yesterday that he created the virus to raise awareness of security issues related to iPhone passwords.The virus places Astley's image into smartphones' iPhone wallpaper with the words "Ikee is never gonna give you up".Towns tweets under the name ikeeex and an explanation embedded into the virus source code reads: “people are stupid, and this is to prove it so RTFM. Its not that hards [sic] guys. But hey who cares, its only your bank details at stake.”The virus followed hot on the trail of a similar attack last week in the Netherlands where a Dutch hacker took over similarly vulnerable iPhones and demanded a small fee to release their data.
Were you affected by the virus? Do you think Ashley Towns did you a favour?