There's been a lot of talk about malicious software on jailbroken iPhones lately, but if you haven't been paying close attention, tech site Network World has a breakdown of the worms running wild and how to eradicate them from your device.
As of right now, there are a total of three known iPhone worms, some more harmful than others. You're only vulnerable if you've jailbroken your iPhone and enabled SSH without changing the default password, though, so if you're still running on factory settings, fear not. If you do fall into the jailbreaker crowd, though, read on to make sure you're not infected, and then scroll to the bottom for steps on how to re-secure your device.
The first worm is the Ikee worm, which merely changes your wallpaper to a picture of Rick Astley (of Rickroll-meme fame). If you're familiar with Rickrolling, you may proceed to feel embarrassed. It's pretty easy to tell if you have this worm, unless your wallpaper was already a picture of Rick Astley, in which case check the top of the wallpaper, which, if installed by the worm, says "Ikee is never going to give you up."
The other two worms (the first called iPhone/Privacy.A and the second being unnamed at the moment) are more dangerous, as they collect personal information from your iPhone. If you have the second, unnamed worm, it will direct Dutch bank customers to a fake phishing site in hopes of collecting your bank information. An infection of the unnamed worm exhibits low battery life as a symptom, as it's running a background process to spread itself to other iPhones via WiFi. It also changes your default SSH password to keep you from easily deleting it.
The iPhone/Privacy.A worm is harder to detect, as it doesn't leave anything on the iPhone itself—it uses computers to steal information from iPhones connected to nearby wireless networks. You should, however, have no problem identifying if it's made its way to your computer as long as you have antivirus software (and yes, you're vulnerable even if you're running OS X or Linux, so pick up some antivirus software to make sure you aren't spreading this stuff around!).
If you think you may be infected, hit the link to get directions on how to remove them from your device. Also, whether you have a worm or not, make sure you protect yourself by changing your iPhone's default root password. It also might be a good idea to install SBSettings from Cydia so you can turn SSH off when you don't need it—no sense in having your iPhone more vulnerable than it needs to be.
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