Worm attack bites at Apple iPhone

The first worm to infect the Apple iPhone has been discovered spreading "in the wild" in Australia.

The self-propagating program changes the phone's wallpaper to a picture of 80s singer Rick Astley with the message "ikee is never going to give you up".

The worm, known as ikee, only affects "jail-broken" phones, where a user has removed Apple's protection mechanisms to allow the phone to run any software.

Experts say the worm is not harmful but more malicious variants could follow.

"The creator of the worm has released full source code of the four existing variants of this worm," wrote Mikko Hypponen of security firm F-secure.

"This means that there will quickly be more variants, and they might have nastier payload than just changing your wallpaper."

The picture of Rick Astley is believed to be a nod to the internet phenomenon known as Rickrolling, where web users are tricked into clicking on what they believe is a relevant link, only to find that it actually takes the user to a video of the pop star's song "Never gonna give you up".

'Stupid people'

The worm has so far only been found circulating in Australia, where the hacker - Ashley Towns - who wrote the program lives.

The 21-year-old told Australia's ABC News Online that he created the virus to raise the issue of security.

It only exploits jail-broken phones that have SSH installed, a program that enables other devices to connect to the phone and modify the system and files. The worm is able to infect phones if their owners have not changed the default password after installing SSH.

"What's clear is that if you have jail-broken your iPhone or iPod Touch, and installed SSH, then you must always change your root user password to something different than the default, 'alpine'," wrote Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos.

"In fact, it would be a good idea if you didn't use a dictionary word at all."

After a phone becomes infected it disables the SSH service, preventing reinfection.

The code contains numerous comments from Mr Towns about his motivation.

One comment reads: "People are stupid and this is to prove it."

"It's not that hard guys. But hey who cares its only your bank details at stake."

The worm can be removed by changing the phone's password and deleting some files.

Some estimates suggest that up to 10% of all iPhones and iPod Touch are jail-broken.

The practice allows a phone user to install software and applications that have not been approved by Apple.

"Phone users may rush into jail-breaking their iPhones in order to add functionality that Apple may have denied to them, but if they do so carelessly they may also risk their iPhone becoming the target of a hacker," said Mr Cluley.

"My prediction is that we may see more attacks like this in the future."

Taking Care of Your Gadgets

One of the hottest and the most popular gadgets today are the iphones. These are no ordinary phones because they have features that are way far better than those of ordinary phones. Both in terms of design and functions, they tend to be better than our ordinary phones. Having one of these iphones makes you be recognized by your peers because as we all know, not all are given the privilege to have this gadget, it is then important for us to take care of these kinds of gadgets because they are priced at a considerably high rate. Damaging them even just a bit could probably mean replacing them. We should be very careful when it comes to these things.

If we want to take care of these, we should be able to learn or know more about its parts such as iphone dock to and the proper ways of taking care of them. Having this knowledge would probably mean that we are much capable of taking care of our gadgets. If in case you want to make your iphone have a look that would make others envy it, try having blackberry case for it. This casing will surely give it a look that will make it look great. These products also come with accessories like the bluetooth Headset. This is another one thing that we should be careful about because these accessories are very much sensitive.

Having the latest gadgets is such a great thing that can happen to a person. But if so happen that you have one, see to it that you can properly take care of it because if you don't, there will come a time when these gadgets will be damaged and gone from you. I am pretty sure that you don't want that to happen so I guess, you should really learn on how to take care of these things or else, it will be your great lost. You will lose not only money but also something of great value.

Awards offered for map mash-ups

A competition aimed at making the most of map data has been launched.

Backed by UK mapping agency Ordnance Survey, the GeoVation competition aims to find new ways for geography to empower citizens.

Ideas already submitted include a service that lets pedestrians map safe routes based on the location of CCTV cameras.

Another suggests a text alert service to alert 999 callers to their nearest defibrillator.

The initiative comes as the Home Office releases nationwide crime maps.

The map proved so popular that the website initially struggled to cope with demand.

Dragons' Den

There are three broad themes for the GeoVation prize - crime, health and the environment, although entrants can come up with other ideas.

"This is all about investing in worthwhile, exciting and innovative uses of geography," said GeoVation founder John Abbott.

"We believe geography can play a real part in addressing some of the world's big challenges and we want to unleash people's creative potential," he added.

The competition is open to anyone and entrants are free to suggest the use of any resources, such as Google Maps or OS OpenSpace.

The ten shortlisted candidates will be asked to pitch in a Dragons' Den style arena at the end of January.

The outright winner will claim a prize fund of £10,000 to develop their idea. Two runners-up will be awarded £5,000 each.

The closing date for entries is 4 January 2010.

End of an era for early websites

A service that gave many people their first taste of building and owning a web page is set to close.

Yahoo-owned GeoCities once boasted millions of users and was the third most popular destination on the web.

The free site has since fallen out of fashion with users, who have switched to social networks.

Yahoo, which acquired the site for $3.57bn (£2.17bn) in 1999 at the height of the dotcom boom, said sites would no longer be accessible from 26th October.

'Fascinating experiment'

However, many of the pages have been archived and will still be available to view via the nonprofit Internet Archive project.

The giant digital library, which has been archiving the public web since 1996, has set up a special project to archive GeoCities before it is lost forever.

"We've collected a lot of GeoCities sites over the years - but might not have every site and every page," the Internet Archive said.

It is asking for GeoCities users to check whether their site has been archived before Yahoo pulls the plug.

"GeoCities has been an important outlet for personal expression on the web for almost 15 years," it said.

A number of firms - including Yahoo - have also tried to woo GeoCities users to move their pages to paid-for hosting services.

GeoCities started life in 1995 as Beverly Hills Internet, a small web-hosting firm.

The company allowed users to host their web pages in themed cities. For example, "WallStreet" hosted business related sites, whilst "SiliconValley" was used to host computer and technology sites.

Users, known as homesteaders, could build and host their own sites in these online spaces.

At its peak, the site had millions of users.

In April this year, Yahoo said that it was closing the site and would now focus on helping "customers build new relationships online".

When Yahoo announced the end of the site earlier this year, Rupert Goodwins, editor of the ZDNet website, said it was the end of an era.

"I think GeoCities was the first proof that you could have something really popular and still not make any money on the internet.

"It was a fascinating experiment in the pre-industrial era of the internet."

Sales of virtual goods boom in US

Americans look set to spend $1bn (£600m) on virtual goods in 2009, claims a report.

The cash will be spent on add-ons for online games, digital gifts and other items that exist only as data.

Total spend on such items is expected to be up by 100% over 2008 and to double again by the end of 2010, said the analysts behind the report.

In related news, Facebook is updating its gift store so it offers a wider variety of virtual presents.

Social games

Written by games analysts Justin Smith and Charles Hudson, the report says that virtual goods are proving ever more popular with gamers and users of social network sites such as Facebook.

Many players of massively multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft, spend real money on virtual currency to ensure their in-game avatars have the best gear.

Some games in Asia also use the so-called micro-payments model to fund their games in lieu of a monthly subscription fee.

Now, people playing social games such as virtual agriculture simulation Farmville on Facebook are using real cash to purchase game dollars for additions to their farm. Firms such as Zynga, Playdom and Playfish are all growing fast on the back of the rise in social gaming.

The purchase of virtual goods on smartphones, such as Apple's iPhone, are also starting to take off, said the report.

The figures in the report deal only with sales in the US. Introducing the report, the authors said: "While virtual goods have been driving revenues in Asia and Europe for years, 2009 will be remembered as the year virtual goods-based businesses began to scale in the United States."

Facebook has announced an overhaul of its virtual gift shop to expand the range of digital presents members can buy and send to friends, family and colleagues.

As well as virtual birthday cakes and pints of beer, Facebook users can now also send music tracks to each other.

The music service will initially only be available in the US. One Facebook credit (10 US cents/6p) buys one streamed song. Ten credits buys a downloadable MP3.