Dutch hacker holds jailbroken iPhones “hostage” for €5 →

Foresman:

The hacker relied on unchanged root passwords to hack into the phones. He then sent what appears to be an SMS alert to the hacked phones that read, “You iPhone’s been hacked because it’s really insecure! Please visit doiop.com/iHacked and secure your iPhone right now! Right now, I can access all your files.” Going to the website directs the user to send €5 to a PayPal account, after which the hacker will e-mail instructions to remove the hack—which most likely involve restoring the iPhone to factory settings.

The hacker doesn’t appear to have malicious intent, other than to glean some extra cash. “If you don’t pay, it’s fine by me,” reads the page mentioned in the message to the hacked iPhone owners. “But remember, the way I got access to your iPhone can be used by thousands of others—they can send text messages from your number (like I did), use it to call or record your calls, and actually whatever they want, even use it for their hacking activities! I can assure you, I have no intention of harming you or whatever, but, some hackers do! It’s just my advice to secure your phone.”

So was Apple right about jailbreaking? Without their constant attempts to break the jailbreak, a much larger if still minority with would have had their iPhones jailbroken, leading to security issues such as this. And the easier the jailbreak, the less nerdy the jailbreaker. At least in this case the hacker is kind enough to offer a way out. Who knows how many iPhones have already been compromised and the owner doesn’t know about it?