Got an iPhone ?

[Kip Powick]

The first virus to affect Apple's popular iPhone has begun to circulate locally in Australia.

The worm, called Ikee, only affects phones that have been "jailbroken" by their owners. Jailbreaking removes the iPhone's protection devices, while allowing the owner to download any software they want into the phone.

Ikee changes the phone's intro wallpaper to a picture of '80s pop star, Rick Astley, with the words, "ikee is never going to give you up," scrolled across the top. It's an apparent extension of the Web meme known as Rickrolling.

"The worm targets users who have jailbroken their phone but have not changed their default root login password," security expert of Mikko Hypponen of the firm F-Security wrote in a company blog. "At the moment, we have no confirmed reports of Ikee outside of Australia."

As yet, Ikee is not destructive, but soon could be.

"There will quickly be more variants, and they might have nastier payload," wrote Hypponen.

Ikee was created by Ashley Towns, a 21-year-old Australian. In an interview with that country's ABC News, Towns said he created Ikee to highlight security issues, rather than to do any damage.

"Somebody with more malicious intent could have done anything - read your SMSs, go through your emails, view your contacts, photos - anything," Towns said.