Tag Archives: Telstra
Ashley Towns Rickrolls iPhones, Claims First iPhone Virus
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.
Categories Apple Inc., Apple iPhone, Ashley Towns, iPhone, Optus, Rick Astley, Telstra, Telstra Corporation, Vodafone
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Telstra CEO Solomon Trujillo Stepping Down June 30
Solomon Trujillo, CEO of Telstra will be stepping down on June 30. Telstra is a telecommunications company based in Australia. His salary with the telecommunications company is about $11 million plus bonuses. Trujillo put Telstra in an awkward position because he initiated confrontation with the Australian government regarding regulation against the telecommunications company.
“The whole world is turning against the sort of attitude that Trujillo put on display,” stated Paul Budde, head of BuddeComm.
Trujillo was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming and received his Bachelors and MBA from the University there. Trujillo joined Telstra around the middle of 2005 and was previously CEO of US West, Graviton, and Orange. In December, Telstra was ejected from the National Broadband Network after submitting an incomplete bid.
Telstra’s Next G wireless broadband will be boosted to 21Mbps and they are consolidating to an all-IP core according to CNET. The new CEO will oversee the transition to this new network. The infrastructure must prove to be relevant and profitable. Telstra also will need to quickly offer new applications and services that utilizes the new network.
Budde believes that the new CEO will not be within the company. The new leader “will have to be a far more diplomatic, more charismatic person who is willing to sit down with the government–and not the level of arrogance that Trujillo has displayed.”
Categories Solomon Trujillo, Telstra
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