Change your jailbroken iPhone SSH password with MobileTerminal
By Will Park on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 5:25 PM PST In Apple, Security, iPhone, iPhone OS
There’s an iPhone infection going around, so we thought it would be a good idea to post a quick “How-to” guide for changing your jailbroken iPhone’s SSH password. Unlike the Swine Flu, no amount of hand-washing or coughing into the bend in your arm is going to prevent your jailbroken iPhone from contracting a malicious infection. On the plus-side, changing the default password on your jailbroken iPhone should inoculate your handset from current iPhone worms.
If you’re using a jailbroken iPhone, iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS, and you’ve messed around with SSH before, we highly recommend you change your SSH password.
Here’s how:
- Since you’re jailbroken, you have Cydia installed on your iPhone. Fire up Cydia.
- Find the “MobileTerminal” app and install it.
- Fire up the “MobileTerminal” app from your homescreen.
- Type in the command “su root” and hit enter (without quotes).
- When prompted for your password, type in “alpine” and hit enter.
- Type in the command “passwd” and hit enter.
- You’ll be prompted for a new password. Enter something you’re likely to remember. Seriously, don’t put down something obscure that you’ll forget – that might come back to bite you later on.
- Repeat your new password.
- That’s it! You are now protected from all current SSH backdoor security threats.
The entire process takes maybe a minute, depending on how long it takes for you to download/install MobileTerminal and how long it takes you to type in the above commands. There’s really no excuse for not changing your password.
Unfortunately, when I tried to change my root password about a month ago, it bricked my iPhone… Oh, not right away. But when I rebooted the phone I was in for a nasty shock. It went into an eternal loop in which the Apple logo appeared for 5 minutes or so, then the screen would go black, then the Apple logo would appear again for 5 minutes or so… and on an on.
Fortunately, I had backed up the phone in iTunes recently, and putting the iPhone in recovery mode and restoring with my custom IPSW made everything all right again.
My solution has been to keep openSSH off my iPhone.
This would be great if MobileTerminal worked on the 3.x software. As of now, it is not supported.
I use an iPod touch 1G 8gb and mobile terminal worked fine. I followed the instructions that were posted in Cydia, though.
I just changed the root password on mine and my wife’s iphone. And we’re both running fw 3.1.2 on an iPhone 3G. I hope you find another way to change your password.
What if you forgot the Password. What do you do?
I forgot to add that I was using MobileTerminal.app
I can’t type the default password “alpine” into the code! the keyboard just doesn’t let me type anthing in when I get to that stage ? what should I do now ?
its ok , just that the pass is not showed while you type it, but is there just type alpine and enter