Ashley Towns is the first person to have created an iPhone virus, or so he claims. He does not regret writing it and he made sure to remind people that Rick Astley is here to stay. The iPhone virus is called “ikee” and it changes the wallpaper of iPhones to a picture of 80′s pop singer Rick Astley. A message on top of the wallpaper states “ikee is never going to give you up,” a pun on Astley’s popular song “Never Going To Give You Up.”

Towns, 21, said he created the virus out of boredom and curiosity. “I had just formatted my iPhone and it told me to set the password in bold, big letters and I wondered how many people have actually done that,” stated Towns in an e-mail to ComputerWorld. “So I ran a scan on my [Optus] 3G network and there was 26 phones running the service that’s vulnerable, and out of that 26, 25 hadn’t changed their passwords.”

Then he scanned the Optus 3G network and found 26 phones that were vulnerable. Of those 26 phones, 25 of them did not have changed passwords. Many jailbroken iPhones have a Unix utility running called SSH (Secure Shell). SSH runs using the iPhone default password, “alpine.”

Towns stands by his virus because it does not do anything malicious, even though it is a form of vandalism. He initially started by spreading the virus on the Optus network in Australia, but then he started targeting networks on Vodafone and Telstra. Towns even claimed he heard a report about his virus hitting a phone in China too.

“We partner deeply with handset makers and mobile operators around the world,” stated Scott Rockfeld, group product manager for Windows Mobile.  Microsoft and Telstra Corporation fo Australia has announced that they are launching a new line of phones together that will be powered by the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system.  The Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system will be installed on several Motorola Inc. and Samsung Electronics phones this April and May.

Telstra and Microsoft partnered together this past November.  The new mobile operating systme will have better web browsing capabilities and feature better operation with touch screen.  Microsoft’s smartphone business increase from 11% in 2007 to 13.3% last year according to IDC, a market research firm.  Microsoft’s biggest competitor, Apple Inc. has seen their market share increase from 3% to 9% during the same period.

Further discussion on Windows Mobile 6.1 and My Phone store available on Techmeme.