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A 21-year-old Australian claims to be the first hacker in the world to infect the iPhone with a virus.
It spreads from phone to phone with each call - but this particular virus is not likely to upset too many people.
The virus simply changes the iPhones' wallpaper - the background image on the screen - to a photograph of 1980s singer Rick Astley, famous for his hit Never Gonna Give You Up.The hacker, Ashley Towns, who attends a college in Sydney, told Australia's ABC News Online that he started spreading the virus to raise the issue of security.
'The virus pretty much exploits people's laziness in not changing heir password,' he said. 'What I've done is shown that anyone can easily hack into an iPhone.'
Rick Astley is a popular choice for mischievous computer users. Video-sharing website YouTube has spawned the phenomenon of 'Rickrolling', where a person provides a weblink to an innocen-looking topic but this actually takes the user to a video of Rick Astley singing 'Never Gonna Give You Up.'
Mr Towns' virus can only infect iPhones which have been 'jailbroken' by their owners - an action that allows phone owners to install applications on their phones which have not been approved by Apple.
Telecommunication experts warn that jailbreaking phones can stir Apple's wrath and that of telephone companies, but there have been few complaints of owners being punished by having their service discontinued.
Mr Towns said that after jailbreaking their iPhones people should always change their password because all iPhones use the same password.
He said that somebody with more malicious intent could have done anything - broken into a phone to read SMS messages, search through emails and view contacts and photos.
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