iOS Hacker Comex Answers Questions About JailbreakMe and His New Internship at Apple

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Allegra posses a very specific set of skills, and he knows how to use them.
Allegra posses a very specific set of skills, and he knows how to use them.

We recently told you that famous jailbreak hacker Comex had been hired by Apple. Comex, who’s real name is Nicholas Allegra, is known for creating the easiest and most user friendly jailbreak for iOS devices called JailbreakMe.

Comex was recently profiled by Forbes, but besides that one interview, he has declined to comment about the status of JailbreakMe and his new internship at Apple. Well, that is.. until now.

In an impromptu Q&A on Reddit, Comex answered many of the pressing questions from both the jailbreak community and those wondering about what he’ll be working on at Apple.

Here are some parts of the Q&A:

Question: After your internship with Apple and after iOS 5 is officially released, will you continue to support the jailbreak community by providing exploits?

Comex: No.

Edit: But I’ll want to jailbreak my phone, so I hope someone finds them :p

Q: Why an intern position though? It seems like you could carry a regular position at apple.
How has the core jailbreak dev teams responded to you going to work forapple?

Comex: I don’t know if I’d want to do that- I’ve never had a job before and I don’t know what it’s like- and I intend to go back to college soon.
Mostly with congratulations.

Have you made any money from the jb scene?

Comex: I’ve made a good amount of money through donations, which is mostly being used to help pay for college. JailbreakMe 2.0 was like $40,000; 3.0 was $15,000 (not quite sure why it decreased).

The jailbreak community took a huge hit when you left. Do you think the active players can outsmart you now that you’re playing for the other team, or are you Apple’s final solution to their jailbreak problem?

Comex: There are a lot of smart people working for Apple already; maybe I can help, but I doubt I can stop people from finding exploits.

Have you met Steve Jobs?

Comex: I wish.

Can you give any insight on how apple views the Jailbreak communities mods?

Comex: I have no idea.

As a huge open book for them to steal take ideas from.

Comex: I certainly don’t mind. Jailbreak community puts an idea in front of people with a crappy implemenation; Apple polishes it to the point where it can be an OS feature. I don’t know whether Apple actually pays attention to jailbreak apps, but see App Store, copy and paste, multitasking, etc…

What, besides money, made you flip to the other side?

Comex: It’s not about money. A large part of my motivation to jailbreak was always the challenge; the internship will be a new sort of challenge.

Will the current jailbreaks and/or the site disappear?

Comex: No, I’ll hand them over to MuscleNerd or chpwn or whoever will take care of them.

Sadly, Comex won’t be able to continue finding exploits in iOS to create awesome jailbreaks like the one available at JailbreakMe.com. If you’re on the correct version of iOS, you can visit www.jailbreakme.com on your iDevice and jailbreak with one swipe of your finger — no computer is required. If you haven’t already checked it out, read our tutorial.

JailbreakMe has been such a phenomena that Comex has been singlehandedly responsible for Apple releasing new versions of iOS to patch his exploits. You have to give Apple credit for hiring Comex. If you can’t beat ’em, hire ’em.

While he seems to have made quite the chunk of change from JailbreakMe, it looks like Comex is in the hacking game for thrills more than anything else. He clearly thrives on the challenge of it all, and we’re sure he’ll find plenty of that sort of thing at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino.

(via iDownloadBlog)

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