Security firm Sophos has reported a malware package hidden in the guise of a cute penguin game for the iPhone. Malware writers are using a popular iPhone game to infect PC users.

Vnunet.com had the story on the sneaky little Trojan virus hidden in what looked like an innocuous iPhone game involving a small penguin jumping from one iceberg to another. But the game, Penguin Panic, is not on the App Store but was released prior to the store’s opening, running on hacked or ‘jail-break’ handsets. The hackers sent out spam messages with the app attached in a file entitled ‘penguin.panic.zip’. Certainly it looks like it’s not the penguins who should be panicking.

Once the zip file is opened, the user is then assailed by the ‘troj/agent-hny’ bug, a Trojan downloader previously classified by Sophos as a low-level threat. But iPhone users or Apple MacOS X have nothing to fear from it…unless of course, they’re running Windows. Ironically, the Trojan is designed to wreak havoc on Windows-running PCs while leaving iPhone and Mac users unharmed. The clear message here is what security companies keep harping on – don’t download attachments of questionable origins.

Since it’s not on the official App Store, likely it’s some measure of reassurance to customers that such Trojan spreaders would be less likely to attempt to distribute such apps through ‘official’ channels. But at the same time, you wonder if there are iPhone apps out there that might be hiding bugs that might hurt your PC.

But so long as Apple continues vetting its apps properly, taking into account things like possible security dangers, then perhaps App Store apps will likely be even more attractive as safe, tested apps. Still, there are likely plenty of jail-broken iPhones out there and likely plenty of oblivious users to the dangers of downloading and installing dangerous apps. One of these days, an ‘unofficial’ app will likely be created to hack into iPhone users’ personal data. And the T-Mobile Sidekick hack stories might just birth an Apple iPhone version.

Related:

Entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 8:04 am under Games, iPhone.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Erna Mahyuni.
Stumble It!