George Hotz, the software hacker who created jailbreak hacks for the iPhone and was later sued by Sony for hacking into its Playstation 3 console, has a new and legitimate job. According to the Techunwrapped.com web site Hotz, also known by his hacker alias GeoHot, started working at the Facebook social networking service in May and officially announced his new gig to his friends on Facebook earlier this month. There"s no word on what kind of position that Hotz has while working at Facebook.
The 21 year old Hotz first gained fame in the hacker world in 2009 by creating jailbreak software for the iPhone. His work allowed the iPhone to be used by other wireless carriers other than AT&T. Later he announced he was planning to hack into Sony"s Playstation 3 game console. He released his first exploit for the PS3 in early 2010. In early 2011 he released the root keys for the PS3. That got Sony to file a lawsuit against Hotz and others on several counts including computer fraud, copyright infringement and other charges. In April it was announced that Sony and Hotz had reached a settlement which, among other things, now forbids Hotz from doing any more hacking on any Sony product. If Hotz chose to break the settlement he would be fined $10,000 by Sony for each violation up to $250,000.
During the legal fight between Sony and Hotz, the hacker group Anonymous admitted to creating a denial of service attack on Sony"s Playstation servers early in 2011 as a gesture of support to Hotz"s case. After the settlement was announced the Playstation Network suffered from a much bigger cyber attack that caused Sony to shut the service for several weeks. Sony blamed Anonymous for the attacks but the hacker group has denied its involvement.