There are many legitimate avenues for reporting vulnerabilities in software, he should have used those instead of trying at a grab for fame or notoriety
Morphius - 14 years ago
What he did was actually illegally damage peoples phones and then use those devices to attack others (ok, they can change it back, but still). I am presuming that since you are reading a Sophos blog you are interested in AV and protecting IT systems, then surely seeing someone access your devices is something you would be keen to stop, if your network was breached because someone had the password of 'password1' you wouldnt be too happy about it!
Likewise, if one of your users were to download a program which sent spam out, you wouldn't accept that as fine providing the spam being sent said "by the way your security sucks" or "you should have read the manual".
Just because a door is open doesn't mean that you have to walk through it! It is no different from finding a locked door and breaking it down!
Smick - 14 years ago
Im 100% with k3!t0.
All it did was change some wallpaper, just a nuisence im sure he could have done alot worse if he was out to hurt people.
k3!t0 - 14 years ago
The thing you need to realise here before passing judgement is that this worm only attacks JAILBROKEN phones. So the iphone owners already breached their devices and elevated privileges. If they hadn't carried this action out on their phone then they wouldn't have been vulnerable. So who is really to blame here? Apple I'm sure won't be happy about people jailbreaking their devices. They opened the door and this kid just stepped on through.
It wasn't malicious, compared to the damage it could have done. Perhaps the charges (which I'm sure won't be that high with unlimited data plans) will teach these iphone owners a lesson in security, and why they shouldn't root their phone if they don't know what they are doing.
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There are many legitimate avenues for reporting vulnerabilities in software, he should have used those instead of trying at a grab for fame or notoriety
What he did was actually illegally damage peoples phones and then use those devices to attack others (ok, they can change it back, but still). I am presuming that since you are reading a Sophos blog you are interested in AV and protecting IT systems, then surely seeing someone access your devices is something you would be keen to stop, if your network was breached because someone had the password of 'password1' you wouldnt be too happy about it!
Likewise, if one of your users were to download a program which sent spam out, you wouldn't accept that as fine providing the spam being sent said "by the way your security sucks" or "you should have read the manual".
Just because a door is open doesn't mean that you have to walk through it! It is no different from finding a locked door and breaking it down!
Im 100% with k3!t0.
All it did was change some wallpaper, just a nuisence im sure he could have done alot worse if he was out to hurt people.
The thing you need to realise here before passing judgement is that this worm only attacks JAILBROKEN phones. So the iphone owners already breached their devices and elevated privileges. If they hadn't carried this action out on their phone then they wouldn't have been vulnerable. So who is really to blame here? Apple I'm sure won't be happy about people jailbreaking their devices. They opened the door and this kid just stepped on through.
It wasn't malicious, compared to the damage it could have done. Perhaps the charges (which I'm sure won't be that high with unlimited data plans) will teach these iphone owners a lesson in security, and why they shouldn't root their phone if they don't know what they are doing.