Rickrolling - The Art of the Prank

From Huffington Post, December 10, 2010:

WikiLeaks Rickroll’d!

It’s nearly the end of 2010, so if you’ve made it this far without being Rickroll’d, we applaud you. The Internet prank (of the decade?) that consists of getting an unsuspecting person to hear the Rick Astly classic has been carried out in many forms, but we’ve never seen it done on something quite as important as this. Yes, it appears even the WikiLeaks cables aren’t immune to the meme that won’t quit. Is this real? No. But that doesn’t stop it from being one of the best Rickrolls we’ve ever seen. (via Buzzfeed)

World’s first iPhone worm Rickrolls angry fanbois
by Dan Goodin
The Register
8th November 2009

ikee-iphone-wallpaper-200 iPhone owners in Australia awoke this weekend to find their devices targeted by self-replicating attacks that display an image of 1980s heart throb Rick Astley that’s not easily removed.

The attacks, which researchers say are the world’s first iPhone worm in the wild, target jailbroken iPhones that have SSH software installed and keep Apple’s default root password of “alpine.” In addition to showing a well-coiffed picture of Astley, the new wallpaper displays the message “ikee is never going to give you up,” a play on Astley’s saccharine addled 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

Tricking victims in to inadvertently playing the song has become a popular prank known as Rickrolling.

A review of some of the source code, shows that the malware, once installed, searches the mobile phone network for other vulnerable iPhones and when it finds one, copies itself to them using the the default password and SSH, a Unix application also known as secure shell. People posting to this thread on Australian discussion forum Whirlpool first reported being hit on Friday. Continue reading “World’s First iPhone Worm”

Tag: Rickrolling

Single Most Damning Wikileaks Cable

World’s First iPhone Worm