A 19 year old hacker famous for his one-click iPhone jailbreak site JailBreakMe is reportedly set to start an internship at Apple in a fortnight.Nicholas Allegra, who goes by the online tag ‘comex’, recently tweeted “So, the week after next I will be starting an internship with Apple.”
Jailbreaking is the removal of software limitations set by Apple on its iOS devices like iPhones by accessing and modifying the root files at the core of the operating system. In an informal Q&A on Reddit, Allegra revealed that he would no longer be supporting the jailbreaking community after his stint at Apple.
The JailBreakMe site garnered around US$55,000 in donations for Allegra, which he says was mostly used to funding his college degree.
While the stint is temporary, Allegra says that it is not for money but rather as a new challenge, just like jailbreaking was for him originally.
He may be setting down the hacker hat for now, but he has his eyes set on HP’s TouchPad: “I am getting a TouchPad, though; no hacking needed there but perhaps some fun low level project,” he said on Reddit.
Going legit is no foreign concept for modders, hackers and even those on the less-than-legal side of the fence. Apple iPhone hacker Ashley Towns scored a job at iPhone app developer Mogeneration after creating a worm that targeted jailbroken iPhones, for instance.
