First iPhone Trojan horse reported
Antivirus vendors report the threat to users is minimal now that the code is offline.
Seen more as a prank than an actual threat, a Trojan horse for the Apple iPhone, first reported on Saturday, has already come and gone. Still, users should be on the look out for a package called "iPhone firmware 1.1.3 prep," described as something you need to install before updating to the new 1.1.3 firmware. Billed as an "important system update," the code does little more than cause annoyance. According to various sources, once the Trojan is installed it simply displays the word "shoes."
However, the Trojan also overwrites several legitimate applications, including Erica's Utilities, Launcher, Doom, and OpenSSH, meaning that if you uninstall the Trojan, you will need to reinstall these applications later. This appears to be a consequence of poor programming.
The risk to iPhone users is now considered negligible since the host sites have all been taken down.
As antivirus vendor F-Secure concluded in its blog, "This time it was an 11-year-old kid playing with XML files who created the Trojan. Next time it might be someone else with more skills and with specific target."