Inc. Technology » Infamous Hacker Geohot Now a Facebook Employee

Infamous Hacker Geohot Now a Facebook Employee

Posted By Minda Zetlin On June 30, 2011 @ 12:23 pm In Apps,Blogging and Social Media,Computer Security,Internet and Online Business,Managing Technology,Smartphones and PDAs,Tablets and eReaders | 2 Comments

In techie circles, “hacker” can be a term of respect, denoting someone who is very, very good at programming, rather than the more common meaning: a criminal bent on gaining illegal access to others’ data. Every once in a while, the two meanings of the term converge, and that happened this week when Facebook hired George Hotz ^[1], a.k.a. Geohot, a hacker by both definitions, known for “jailbreaking” devices so that they could be used to load applications not approved by their manufacturers.

Geohot made a name for himself by jailbreaking the iPhone and was sued by Sony for doing the same with the PlayStation3, allowing users to load custom packages. Perhaps ironically, he’ll be helping Facebook create its iPad app.