I just wanted to weigh in on this as well.
My Apple TV has been working fine with a changed root password for many months. Yesterday I did an apt-get update/apt-get upgrade, and today I’m running into this issue.
I have a non-jailbroken iPhone, and my Apple TV is behind a router. I strongly doubt that this is malware - all signs point to a software update gone awry, to me anyway.
I’ll re-jailbreak if necessary, but I’m concerned about re-updating software if this may happen again.
In fact, looking at what I upgraded yesterday:
Get:1 http://apt.awkwardtv.org stable/main org.xbmc.xbmc-atv2 11.0-3 [49.0MB]
Get:2 http://apt.saurik.com ios/675.00/main pcre 8.30-5 [176kB]
Get:3 http://apt.saurik.com ios/675.00/main openssh 6.0p1-10 [423kB]
Get:4 http://apt.saurik.com ios/675.00/main mobilesubstrate 0.9.3998 [99.7kB]
The fact that openssh was updated can’t be a coincidence, can it?
Hold the menu and rewind (hold left on the center button) on the Apple remote for about 5 seconds. You will see a remote icon on the top left of your tv screen showing the remote “unpairing”
Interesting. We’ve tried upgrading all items here numerous times and simply cannot get SSH to break on any of the devices we’ve tested. I’ve attached the output from “dpkg -l” which lists the version numbers of what’s currently installed.
Are you running aTV Flash (black)? If so, sending in a diagnostic report will allow us to see the the exact items and versions you have installed.
Fixed my problem.
I updated the Apple TV software to the newest and the SeasonPass software. After updating to the official apple software I was able to jailbreak and ssh without a problem. I was off by 1 day in the download of the jailbreak version. My fault for not posting software versions. very important.