14 DAY TRIAL // The iPhone, that extremely popular gadget built by the Cupertino company Apple, is one of the latest devices threatened by some malicious packages, as Orla Cox of Symantec today warned. What's interesting is that this threat, if we can name it so, is not as dangerous as it may sound, because the only thing it does is to harm some of the applications deployed on the affected iPhone. The malicious file comes as a firmware update and is named "iPhone firmware 1.1.3 prep". Its creators described the package "an important system update; install this before updating to the new 1.1.3 firmware", according to the Symantec official.
As I've said, the package doesn't really affect the device, because once it is deployed on an iPhone it also overwrites files used by other applications. This obviously means that once uninstalled, the "firmware update" will also remove the said files, so the affected programs won't work anymore. Erica's Utilities, "a collection of command line utilities for the iPhone" and OpenSSH seem to be the only two affected programs, Orla Cox added.
"This is technically the first Trojan horse seen for the iPhone, however it does appear to be more of a prank than an actual threat. The impact of uninstalling the 'Trojan' would appear to be an unintended side effect. The risk to users is minimal as they would have to choose to install the bogus package and the site which was hosting it has now been taken offline. Nevertheless, iPhone users should exercise caution regarding the packages they choose to install on their phones", the Symantec official continued.
Sure, there's nothing dangerous because reinstalling the affected programs should resolve the problems, but this is an obvious sign that virus / malware writers are going to get focused on those popular Apple devices and build more powerful threats.