iPhone worm hacker gets death threats, job offers

The creator of the rickrolling iPhone worm has spoken of possible job offers and death threats since the release of the Jesus Phone malware last weekend. Ashley Towns, 21, from Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia, told local media he received both threats and offers of possible work a day after he was identified as the …

[Carter Cole]

but most of all sammy is my hero...

the same was true of one of my favorite xxs attacks the myspace hero worm

seen here with technical description http://namb.la/popular/

myspace got pissed and brought up charges so even tho hes not a for pay hacker malware guy he still may have some legal trouble in his future

[Joe 3]

Be fair to the guy -

he did a favour to jailbroken iPhone users who'd installed SSH, as sooner or later it would have been discovered by malicious hackers. At least the warning's out there, with little damage done.

He could have easily sold the exploit on to real criminals, after all, yet he didn't do that.

[John Molloy]

Conflicker Worm Author says...

He described it as an "experiment" that got out of hand: "I didn't really think about legal consequences at the time. I honestly never expected it to go this far."

See. When you phrase it like that you can see how incredibly stupid this guy was. He got his five minutes of publicity now he needs his five years in jail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Buggy viruses...

People coding malware, or even very simple applications for fun really don't care that much about bugs...

I've written some horrendous/lazy code before, mainly because it was just for myself or for a few uses elsewhere, doesn't make me a bad developer.

[Bernie 2]

Death threats.

Wow. How very, very sad must you be to threaten someone with death for changing your phone's wallpaper?

Okay it's lame and annoying but death threats? I know most death threats are pretty empty but even so.

I hope I never meet anyone so emotionally bankrupt that their phones wallpaper is getting them irate, rather than say, anything that actually matters in the real world.

What's more, it's THEIR fault for modifying their equipment without a care in the world for the consequences. Some people are just so dumb.

[Marvin the Martian]

"NSW newspaper"

Am I the only one who read that as "NSFW newspaper" and thought "Ah, you mean the Sun"?

Thought so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Naughty naughty!

Is this more or less what happned to that student that released the first Sendmail worm, many many moon ago? Didn't it take him about 5 years to get his life back together after the world and his dog wanted his head on a platter for messing with their wide-open Sendmail gateways?

[Anonymous Coward]

He was not the first

First of all, if anyone wants more information about this just search for "Ashley Towns" on Encyclopedia Dramatica. It seems he caught the attention of Anon.

Secondly, he was not the god damned first. A week earlier the Dutch worm that required €5 to access information to remove the worm was circulating. The source code for this worm was released publically and Towns simply modified this for his own purposes. He's nothing more than a script kiddie and certainly doesn't deserve job offers.

[ffrankmccaffery]

threats

i bet he must really be shitting himself worrying about some typically limp-wristed machead making threats against him

[Destroy All Monsters]

"messing with their wide-open Sendmail gateways"

Google will help you ascertain that these were not "wide open sendmail gateways" but that you had to buffer overflow the sendmail process, then load source, compile it, make sure that it couldn't be removed easily, and further attack other machines..

If that is "messing with sendmail" then breaking and entering then bludgeoning granny to death is similar to pushing the unlocked front door.

[Kristjan Kanarik]

Jailbreakers are at fault

So if you jailbreak your phone, why do you think it should be any less open to outside threats than a usual PC without Firewall and a proper AV application? If you think that the only reason Apple wants to approve the applications before they're available from the AppStore is that they're money hungry... well think again.

[Giles Jones]

Sophos

I found it odd that the consultant at Sophos would say that the worm contained loads of bugs.

So what? do you want a worm or virus that has no flaws and creates even more damage?

If the people at Sophos were so wonderful they wouldn't be writing anti-virus software.

[Alex 3]

Don't buy an apple then....

Buy a pear...

[Winkypop]

Wollongong !!

Shit, the poor bastards already in jail (of a sort)

Wollongong (Hell's waiting room)

[M man]

this is your last warning...

Theres news of a virus doing the rounds that does nothing....(except ask for a donation on the lock screen)......you do nothing.

then one changes your background...so you threaten the script kiddy.....since you dont seem to see the warning he just gave you...you do nothing?

wonder if you get infected by the one that steals your banking data now doing the rounds????