I didn’t mention it when the extortion scheme popped up last week
because I couldn’t remember if anyone here used iPhone OS devices
(though I should have, since there was that thread…).

So a word of warning if you haven’t already heard about this from more
reputable sources than the jelly:

IF you own an iPhone or iPod touch, and

IF you jailbroke said device, and

IF you then installed OpenSSH on your device (it let’s you ssh/telnet
into it and copy files and other useful stuff), and

IF you ignored the instructions when you installed OpenSSH to
subsequently change your root password, then …

Behold my amazing psychic talents: Your root password is “alpine”.
Though chances are that if you actually did all the stuff I listed
above, you don’t actually know that.

I’m surprised it’s taken this long to show up as a problem, but I
guess it’s a case of needing jailbreaking to have gone sufficiently
mainstream, which I suppose it now has. Anyway, if by chance one of
the highly intelligent people here have just discovered that their
device might be susceptible, load up Cydia. It has instructions in
its main menu on how to change your root and account passwords.