Test Source Pops Up - Do Not Add It!

by Eric March on May 2, 2008 at 10:42 pm

There was a scare today about a purportedly malicious source that would reset all of your property lists and send your iPhone or Touch into the dreaded Spinning Wheel of Death, forcing you to restore.  The source is correct, and the results of adding it and installing whatever it contains, are correct, but the source is not intentionally malicious.  Turns out it’s a genuine McAfee product — an early alpha test repository for a forthcoming antivirus product aimed at the iPhone and Touch.  McAfee’s director of PR Joris Evers explains:

The application you blogged about is indeed a genuine McAfee project. We are always working on new platforms including the popular ones. In this particular case we were running a test to validate some recently developed technology. We happen to be first to test AV technology for iPhone. We’re happy that iPhone users are already getting excited about it, as evidenced by your blog and the thousands of people who are trying out the application. Still, we are not ready to announce a new product, our development work is in the early stages.

Interesting as that is, you are nevertheless strongly advised to avoid adding the following source:

http://ipkg.mcafeemobile.com

DO NOT ADD THIS SOURCE. You’ll mess up your device but good.  Besides, there aren’t any iPhone viruses to scan for yet, so it’s all a bit pointless anyway.

(Source: TUAW)

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