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First iPhone trojan discovered – 2008 kicks off with first iPhone malware

By: , IntoMobile
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 6:11 PM

iPhone Trojan discovered through Installer.appIt was predicted to happen. The New Year was supposed to usher in a new wave of evil iPhone coders, and it looks like an 11-year old kid decided to kick off the new year with his very own piece of iPhone malware. The iPhone Trojan sneaks in through jailbroken iPhones’ Installer.app and starts deleting files from your iPhone’s /var/root/bin directory upon uninstallation.
Beware any Installer.app posing as “113 prep,” an update to “Erica’s Utilities.” Apparently, all the app does is display the prompt “shoes” and nothing else. And, as we just mentioned, it deletes system files when you try to uninstall the little bugger.

Just like an 11-year old to create a piece of malware that does little more than annoy the hell out of you. Shouldn’t he be watching “Dora the Explorer” DVDs or something?

We should consider ourselves lucky that the first malware for the iPhone isn’t any worse. This little trojan just shows all iPhone users to stay wary of unknown applications that you install through the popular Installer.app application. The next piece of malware may come from a more skilled code-writer hell-bent on messin’ with iPhone owners.

[Via: iPhone Central]

About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

  • Tom

    lol… that trojan doesn’t look so bad to me :grin:

  • Will Park

    Not too bad at all :cool:

  • William

    But anyway now we have to suggest to all users of iPhone to buy and install antivirus software :)

  • Kay

    Cool! So they’ve started developing applications for iPhone as predicted for 2008!