Dutch Teenager Hacks Jailbroken iPhones, Tries to Extort €5

He used port scanning to identify iPhones on T-Mobile’s network, and took advantage of the fact that jailbroken iPhones have SSH running and most use the same default password for the root account. The hack seems to have been nothing more than a wallpaper image that shows a fake alert dialog box. (A clever attack, but the fake alert was poorly done — he didn’t even use Helvetica.)

★ Tuesday, 3 November 2009