How to Change the iPhone Root Password

Last Updated: February 23, 2020

For Jailbroken iPhones only: To avoid the iPhone worm and avoid future security breaches. The default password is widely known, which means anyone can access any information you have on your iphone via SSH.

Steps

1
Make sure you have the right version. These instructions assume you are running iPhone OS 3.0 or above.
2
Get your app. The app to use on the iPhone is called MobileTerminal and it’s available for free in the Cydia store.

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3
Once you have MobileTerminal installed, launch it and you should see a prompt saying this or similar:
- iPhone Name: ~ Mobile$
- At that prompt, type: passwd
4
Enter in the old password. You’ll be prompted for the ‘old’ (current) password for the mobile user. Enter this as the old password: alpine
5
Enter in the new password. You’ll then be prompted to enter the new password – so just type in your desired new password. Use good password principles if possible (long and strong). You will not see characters appearing on the screen as you type – that’s normal, not a concern.
6
Re-enter the new password. You’ll then be prompted to re-enter the new password. Do that.
- You should then be returned to the Mobile$ prompt that you started on when opening the MobileTerminal app. There’s no success message to say the password was changed – but if you’re returned to the prompt and do not get an error, the change was successful. And you’re done with change for the mobile account.
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Method 1

Method 1 of 1:
Change Root Password

The second primary admin account for the iPhone is called root – so now you need to change that as well.

1
Type this to switch to the root user: login root
- You’ll be prompted for the root user’s current password.
  1. Enter this: alpine
2
Type this to start the password change routine again: passwd
3
Enter the old password for root (it is ‘alpine’, same as for the mobile user) and enter your desired new password twice, just as you did for the mobile account
4
Done.

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