George Hotz, who will probably find it difficult to shake off his image as the hacker who unlocked the iPhone and hacked Sony’s PS3 and released the console’s private key, has now got a job at the social media network Facebook.
Informed sources say that Hotz has been working at the social network since May but had been keeping a low profile. Apparently, it was only in mid-June that he decided to share this news with his friends.
A Zdnet report says” It all started with a comment from Joshua Hill, a member of the Chronic-Dev Team also known as P0sixninja, during a recent MyGreatFest interview. Hill challenged Hotz to find a bootrom exploit for the iPad 2, and this news quickly spread on Twitter.
The report continues, “Indeed, Hotz’s Facebook profile (at facebook.com/geohot) reveals quite a bit. He is part of the Facebook network, in addition to RIT, Bergen County Academies, and Google. Furthermore, his most recent public post, which was made at 9:36AM on June 22, 2011, reads as follows: “George Hotz is Facebook is really an amazing place to work…first hackathon over.”
Sony and Hotz settled the PS3 jailbreak lawsuit in April and Hotz agreed not to release any more code. He has kept a low profile since then and seems to have realised that there is nothing to be gained by getting into a tangle with companies like Sony and being in the media eye for all the wrong reasons.
Matthew Humphries of Geek.com, says, “There’s no denying that George Hotz is a talented individual on a computer, and Facebook clearly realized this. Let’s hope they’ve got him working on Facebook security as who better to thwart hackers than a proven hacker.
Humphries gives his opinion on Hotz’s decision as,” It will come as a surprise to a lot of people but it is the right thing to do. If he kept hacking he would only end up facing more lawsuits and possibly even jailtime and some big fines. This way he gets to earn a decent wage working at a forward-thinking company that could really test his skills.”
Emil Protalinkski of Zdnet says, “It’s not clear what Facebook will challenge Hotz with, but I would be surprised if there wasn’t some type of hacking involved. Speculation is already rampant that he is involved in Project Spartan, Facebook’s rumoured HTML 5 Platform that will take on Apple’s App Store.
Although Facebook has not given a give a full statement, a Facebook spokesperson did confirm to Zdnet that Hotz is employed at the company.