iPhone Worm is Rick Astley's Face

Rick Astley used to be a big star in the 80's but now, thanks to some people in YouTube, have become some sort of a joke because of the Rick Roll'd phenomenon. It seems to have died a natural death around late 2008, but it seems to have made a comeback, in a somewhat sinister way: he's become a worm for jailbroken iPhones.

"Apple iPhone owners in Australia have reported that their smartphones have been infected by a worm that has changed their wallpaper to an image of 1980s pop crooner Rick Astley.

The worm, which could have spread to other countries although we have no confirmed reports outside Australia, is capable of breaking into jailbroken iPhones if their owners have not changed the default password after installing SSH. Once in place, the worm appears to attempt to find other iPhones on the mobile phone network that are similarly vulnerable, and installs itself again."

What a way to have the iPod Touch/iPhone's first worm: an image of an 80's star.

If your iPod Touch/iPhone has it, fret not as all it does is install Astley's wallpaper. To remove it, you need to change your root user password and delete "LOCKBACKGROUND.JPG" from (VAR/MOBILE/LIBRARY).

What's interesting here is that the creator has a message for those who got the worm.

Is this for the users who have brazenly jailbroken their iPod Touch/iPhones or for Apple? Nevertheless, this is proof that the iPhone 3G's security is really bad.

Source

iPod Touch 3 detected! iPhone has Exit Strategy

Apple's iPhone 3GS and the rumors swirling about the iPod Touch seems to be one of the hotter news today and we'll be covering some of them today.

iPod Touch 3 Spotted?

According to reports coming from Pinch Media, they noticed an “iPod 3,1″ string in their version reporting. Here's more info regarding this string:

• the first time an application using Pinch Analytics was run by a ‘iPod3,1′ device occurred in late April 2009;
• applications using Pinch Analytics were run by ‘iPod 3,1′ devices very infrequently until late May 2009, when the pace picked up slightly;
• As of this date, a few dozen distinct ‘iPod 3,1′ devices have run around two dozen different applications using Pinch Analytics;
• The applications being run on ‘iPod 3,1′ devices have all been the larger, more popular applications using Pinch Analytics, with hundreds of thousands to millions of unique users– other than their size, the applications have little else in common.

Does this signal the coming of the iPod Touch 3 in the near future? We hope so, and when it does, we'll report it right away!

Exit Strategy NYC: an iPhone app that makes your train ride smoother!

Even for those who have stayed in New York for a long time will get lost among all the trains and stops from time to time, resulting in a lot of hairy situations. Don't fret as there's an app available that will make your trip underground smoother. Exit Strategy NYC is here to serve you!

Just pick the line, your stop, and whether you're going uptown or downtown. (Yes, it works offline, since there's no AT&T in the subway, or anywhere in NYC it seems at times.) It shows which subway car is closest to which exit. Like say if you're going to Union Square and want to get off at the 16th St. end, not 14th by the carcass of the Virgin Megastore. Used every time you're on the subway for a year, the hour of time you save not wandering from one end of the subway station to another to get out where you need to easily adds up to $2.

This application will even point you to what car you should take so that once you go down you can head off right into the street you wanted in the first place! How convenient!

Source for iPod Touch 3 spotting
Source for Exit Strategy NYC app