Jailbroken iPhones All at Risk for Same Hack - Fortunately the Fix is Easy   - 846 Views,

A Dutch hacker has demonstrated that jailbreaking your iPhone opens it up to a hack that allows your jailbroken iPhone to be easily accessed and remotely controlled. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t jailbreak your iPhone (or that you should, we pass no judgement on the act of jailbreaking an iPhone), but it does mean that if you are going to jailbreak your iPhone, you need to know how to close the security hole you will create (or already have created) by jailbreaking your iPhone.

The initial issue is that the act of jailbreaking an iPhone enables, among other things, SSH to be active on the iPhone. And the SSH service on the iPhone activates with a default username and password. If you don’t know to change the default password, then anybody who knows that default username and password combination can log on to your iPhone and wreak all kind of havoc - including accessing your contacts, and sending text messages to them in your name. (By the way, that default username is “root” and the default password is “alpine”.)

The hacker used the SSH default password to log on to jailbroken iPhones and install his own software on the compromised phones. Initially, he then sent the following message to the owners of those phones - *from their own phone* - letting them know that he’d breached their phone, and demanding a payment to remove the software:

“Your iPhone’s been hacked because it’s really insecure! Please visit doiop.com/iHacked and secure your iPhone right now! Right now, I can access all your files.”