iPhone Worm Creator Says “Oops!”

10:43 am, November 13th, 2009, Nicole Martinelli

rickroll

The 21-year-old Australian behind the first iPhone virus got a death threat, media interviews and job offers as the result of his efforts.

Ashley Towns, who said the result was an “experiment that got out of hand,” created a worm that switches iPhone wallpaper for an image of 80s pop singer Rick Astley. Astley, who sang the 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up,” who morphed into the Internet prank known as “Rickrolling.” The bait-and-switch worm replaces an ordinary video with one of Astley.

Here’s how it happened:

“I was reading a blog that said in bold letters to change your passwords and I wondered how many had.”

It turned out that most of the people on his network had not.

“So I started writing it from there. I stayed up all night and when I was half asleep I decided to test it.

“I didn’t really think about legal consequences at the time. I honestly never expected it to go this far.

“I thought it would spread to no more than 10 or 15 people.”

Hundreds of jailbroken iPhones were said to be infected. Towns, who lives at home, also got chewed out by his parents:

“My parents were definitely shocked at first. I told them ‘I think I messed up somewhere.’
“They didn’t really understand and then I went to my room and they Googled it and said: ‘What have you done?’”

Full interview on the Age.

Posted by Nicole Martinelli in News, iPhone | Comment on this article

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About the author

Nicole Martinelli was born in San Francisco and has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. Cultish tendencies and love for DIY increased while living on the Old Continent, where tech came late and cost more in Big Mac index terms. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek. Since 1999, she's been tapping away at zoomata. You can also find her on Facebook, Linked in and Twitter.

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4 comments

Sounds familiar, just like that student who found a bug in Sendmail many years ago, accidently released the very first worm, took him something like 5 years to get his life back together…

Fuzzypig, on November 13th, 2009 at 5:38 pm

Ha, now, you see, I would never do a thing like this. Because I am too stupid with technology.

Ka-fish, on November 13th, 2009 at 11:59 pm

I LOVE (relatively) harmless carnage like this. What can I say? It’s a guilty pleasure.

Jake, on November 15th, 2009 at 6:56 pm

I’m with Jake on this one