A short while ago, some idiot had the brilliant idea to SSH into jailbroken iphones in his area and install some “ransomware” on every iphone system he could. The ransomware, according to tech site Neowin, said “You iPhone’s been hacked because it’s really insecure! Please visit [LINK REMOVED] and secure your iPhone right now! Right now, I can access all your files.”

This mensa candidate not only gave his website address, he actually had the stones to ask for a reward of €5 to be sent to a PayPal address.

Needless to say, he got caught. Now he’s posted removal instructions on how to get rid of his ransomware so people won’t beat him so bad when they catch him on the street.

Even though the hacker was Dutch and this happened over in the Netherlands, the process he followed can easily be duplicated over here.

So if you have jailbroken your iphone, and you haven’t changed your root password, here’s the easy way to do it…

Step one: Install “mobile terminal” from Cydia (if you don’t have it already)

Step two: Run mobile terminal. Type “su root” (without quotes). The default password on all iphones is “alpine”, so you will need to type in “alpine” (without quotes) when it asks you for the initial password.

Step three (optional): Type “cd” (without quotes) to shorten the prompt

Step four: type “passwd” (without quotes) and press ENTER. Now type in your new password of choice. You will be prompted twice for this password as confirmation.

Step five: now type “passwd mobile” (without quotes) and press ENTER. Now type in your new mobile password of choice. You will be prompted twice for this password as confirmation.

That’s it. EXIT and quit mobile terminal.

If you haven’t jailbroken your iphone, or have no idea when I’m talking about, don’t worry. This issue only affects jailbroken iphones.