You know what they say; If you can’t beat ‘em, hire them.

Sony was thinking along those lines when they offered Koushik Dutta, a hacker and developer, a Software Engineer role within their R&D team. Dutta politely declined stating, “due to Sony’s recent treatment of a fellow hacker, George Hotz, I could not in good conscience work at Sony.”

Tech companies hiring hackers is no new thing, and now 19-year old Nicholas Allegra, known as Comex to the iPhone world, will be starting an internship with Apple in early September. Comex announced on Twitter that he will start the internship “the week after next.” He gained notoriety last year when he released a web-based JailbreakMe exploit for the iPhone 4 while a member of the iPhone Dev Team. In July, Apple fans rejoiced again when he released an updated version of JailbreakMe for iOS 4.3.3, which took advantage of an exploit found in the operating system’s PDF reader. However, Apple responded with an update that patched up the security hole related to the PDF exploit.

Allegra has been on leave from Brown University since last winter while looking for an internship. Steve Jobs himself dropped out of college and in a commencement speech to graduates at Stanford University, mentioned that dropping out was one of the best decisions he ever made. Perhaps Allegra will follow in Job’s footsteps, drop out of Brown and end up working for Apple permanently. Who knows? The future looks bright for young Allegra. The hacker has expressed that circumventing Apple’s security measures comes easily to him.

“It feels like editing an English paper,” Allegra said. “You just go through and look for errors. I don’t know why I seem to be so effective at it.”

Allegra taught himself to program when he was just 9 years old, and confessed that he hacks the iPhone because he likes the challenge. Maybe he’ll bring the tweaks to the iPhone that fans love and desire, without the need to jailbreak.

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Yup, that’s Comex, the guy behind JailBreakMe.com. Forbes hooked up with Comex for an interview, gaining some insight into the process that Allegra took to crack through Apple’s code. In his own words, developing the jailbreak was “like editing an English paper… go through and look for errors. I don’t know why I seem to be so effective to it.”

Yes, the jailbreak that he released last month for the iPad 2 (and other iDevices) was only effective for nine days before the security team in Apple scrambled to release a patch to nix it, but 1.4 million people used the tool in that relatively small window.

To Comex, it’s not about the money; “it’s just about the challenge, more than anything else.”

Photo: Nathaniel Welch

The post An interview with Nicholas Allegra, aka Comex of JailBreakMe.com appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

It was a cheer heard ’round the world: the iPad 2 jailbreak had arrived by way of Comex. However, it looks like Apple might be patching up the security hole that allows the new JailBreakMe.com to work in the first place. Yes, already.

They say that the German Federal Office for Information Security discovered a security flaw in iOS in which PDF files could hide malicious code (gee, isn’t that what Comex also discovered), which in turn could provide the hackers with valuable personal data. It’s through a similar kind of PDF exploit that you are able to jailbreak your iOS device through Jailbreakme.com.

The German IT agency calls it a “critical weakness,” and Apple says it “takes security very seriously.” Apple is working on a software update that would patch the hole, but did not specify when it would be available. This would take away the viability of JailBreakMe until Comex can figure out another workaround.

Photo from The Next Web.

The post Upcoming Apple update to kill JailBreakMe iOS exploit? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

After considerable nudging by the online community (and some weak espionage too), Comex has come forward to launch the web-based jailbreak tool that should work with almost all iOS devices. This includes the much anticipated jailbreak for the iPad 2, that adds support for iOS 4.3.3. The jailbreak itself is done through a PDF exploit and it’s completely done through the Safari browser.

In addition to the iPad 2, JailBreakMe will also work with the first iPad (4.3-4.3.3), iPhone 3GS (4.3-4.3.3), iPhone 4 (4.3-4.3.3), iPhone 4 CDMA (4.2.6-4.2.8), iPod touch 3G (4.3, 4.3.2, 4.3.3) and iPod touch 4G (4.3-4.3.3). It won’t work with the first couple gens of iPhone, but if you’re still rocking something that old, this news probably isn’t that relevant to you anyhow.  If you’re not running 4.3.3, you will need to upgrade before visiting the JailbreakMe site.  Once you upgrade, make sure to do a power cycle.  The process is so fast you wont even believe it happend.  Search fo Cydia and you will be good to go .

Four easy steps to Jailbreak the iPad 2

Step 1 Update iOS to 4.3.3

Step 2 Reset Device once update is complete

Step 3 Visit JailBreakme.com on your newly updated iPad 2 version 4.3.3

Step 4 Go to Cydia app

Step 5 Install stuff you never could

The post Finally, the iPad 2 4.3.3 Jailbreak has arrived appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

If you make your way over to JailbreakMe.com, you’ll see a website that looks broken, but it is live. At the top of the page, Comex lets us know that “it’s been far too long,” presumably telling us that he’s as anxious as anyone to start jailbreaking iOS devices through a website again.

But if you look at the background, it’s actually like a microblog. Everything there is posted in reverse chronological order, almost like a brief journal. We get these glimmers of insight into Comex’s process of developing JailbreakMe 3.0 like “add missing files” and “well, wait a sec.” They’re not exactly telling, but they do seem to indicate that the jailbreaking will commence very soon.

Yes, it’s been far too long.

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