Australian iPhone virus creator hired by app development studio

The TAFE student who created the world’s first iPhone virus has reportedly been hired by apps studio MoGeneration, announcing the job on his Twitter feed.

But not everyone is impressed, with an Australian security expert saying 21-year-old Ashley Towns has shown no remorse for creating the virus which spread across hundreds of “jailbroken” iPhones.

Towns announced the job on his Twitter feed, saying “yey, i got the job! I’m now an iPhone application developer!”

MoGeneration has not yet confirmed a position has been filled by Towns, but several tech blogs are reporting the development as true.

The company has achieved international success with a number of different apps including children’s game Moo Shake. The company also creates a number of different corporate apps, listing News Corp as one of its major customers.

The reported appointment comes after Towns’ “Ikee” virus, which was designed to infect jailbroken iPhones, created a global media storm. The virus, while not harmful to the gadgets themselves, was designed by Towns to show owners of jailbroken phones how vulnerable they could be.

Phones which are “jailbroken” have been run through a piece of software that will allow users to access internal files systems and install applications unapproved by Apple.

The virus was unprecedented, with many iPhone users believing their gadgets would be protected from viruses and malicious software – a promise used by Apple in prominent marketing campaigns.

But Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Clueley, who documented the first virus and has analysed a number of others that have appeared since Ikee’s release, says the appointment is not necessarily a good thing.

“Despite admitting writing the Ikee iPhone worm, and personally initially infecting some 100 iPhones with the malware that could gobble up victims’ data allowance, Towns has not had his collar felt by the long arm of the law,” he wrote in a blog post.

“Let’s not forget that his worm not only made unauthorised modifications to the iPhones of its innocent victims (requiring a fiddly repair), and contained some elementary bugs, but it also provided the template for the more dangerous Duh worm which attempts to convert iPhones into a botnet and steal financial information.”

Clueley said Towns has shown “no regret” over his actions, and questions whether he will deliver compensation to his victims for inconveniencing them.

“There are plenty of young coders out there who would not have acted so stupidly, are just as worthy of an opportunity inside a software development company, and are actually quite likely to be better coders than Towns who made a series of blunders with his code.”