Apple watchers expect new iPhone Monday

Unusual leaks may have stolen some surprises, but Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs is still expected to have some new features for the next generation iPhone when he takes the stage on Monday at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference.

Among the new things expected are a front-facing video camera, multi-tasking, more capacity and better battery life.

Some of these features are already offered on competing smartphones that run on Google Inc.'s Android operating system, which is beginning to give Apple some serious competition. The iPhone still has a clear lead in the number of software applications available, though.

One thing that appears to be off the table is the introduction of the iPhone to Verizon Wireless after a spokesman for the carrier this week said that isn't likely to happen in the immediate future.

The rumors over an end to AT&T Inc.'s (NYSE:T) exclusive wireless service arrangement with Apple are fed by constant criticism of its network quality. Jobs this week once again deflected that by saying he didn't think other carriers' networks would have much more success than AT&T has had dealing with the large data load the iPhone brings.

AT&T this week announced a new pricing plan for mobile subscribers, ending an unlimited data plan that many iPhone users found attractive, so that piece of news is also off the table for Monday.

Rumors persist that Apple will offer some sort of Web-based version of iTunes based on technology it acquired when it bought Lala earlier this year. That service was shut down over Memorial Day weekend.

But the only thing that seems certain for Monday is that Apple will keep its streak of coming out with a new version of the iPhone every year will be unbroken. Whether Jobs can pull another significant surprise out of his sleeve will have to wait until he takes the stage.

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A New iPhone Worm is Here, And This Time it’s Malicious [WARNING]

A couple of weeks ago, the first iPhone worm appeared, spreading on jailbroken devices with the SSH application installed (vulnerability being the fact that many users haven’t changed the default root password). As far as worms go, this one was quite benign, merely “rickrolling” users; i.e., changing the background image on the device to an image of Rick Astley.

Now, according to early reports of strange activity by Dutch ISP XS4ALL, and later confirmed by Sophos, there’s a new worm in the wild, and this one is far more malicious.

The new worm is called “Duh” or “Ikee.B”, and it uses the exact same vulnerability as the first one. The fix is thus identical – change the root password in the SSH application to something other than the default, which is “alpine”.

Failing to do so might result in very serious consequences. According to Sophos, Ikee.B is “designed to connect to a server in Lithuania and to follow orders from remote hackers.” It can find vulnerable iPhones on a wide range of IP addresses, including IPs in several different countries, for example the Netherlands, Portugal, Australia, Austria, and Hungary. Furthermore, it changes the root password on the iPhone to “ohshit” (as discovered by Paul Ducklin, head of technology in Sophos Asia Pacific.)

Users who haven’t jailbroken their iPhone or haven’t installed the SSH application are not affected by this vulnerability.

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