Twenty-year-old Nicholas Allegra, known as the hacker Comex, was employed by Apple for about a year, but his employment with the giant tech company is no more. Comex made a name for himself, and caught Apple’s attention, by releasing a lot of jailbreaks for iPhone users all over the world, which resulted in Apple offering him an internship.
Comex announced the news in a tweet, saying: “So… no point in delaying. As of last week, after about a year, I’m no longer associated with Apple.”
According to Forbes, who spoke with Allegra, he is no longer employed at Apple because he forgot to reply to an email offer for him to continue his employment at Apple. Apple apparently takes offer letters very seriously, and as a result, Allegra’s employment was terminated. However, Allegra also noted there was more to it than just an email and said, “it wasn’t a bad ending.” He declined to say anything further and wouldn’t reveal what he worked on during his two internships at Apple.
Allegra’s claim to hacker fame comes from building jailbreak tools for iPhones and iPads, like JailBreakMe 2 and JailBreakMe 3, which let users remove restrictions from iOS devices that only allowed official App Store downloads. Both of these tools effectively defeated iOS’s security measures. Another Apple hacker, Dino Dai Zovi, described Allegra as coming “from the future.” Charlie Miller, an Apple-focused, NSA-trained security researcher who now works at Twitter, said Allegra was years ahead of other iOS hackers.
Allegra plans to go back to his studies at Brown, returning from the hiatus that led to his Apple employment, and doesn’t see himself working on any jailbreaking tools for iOS any time soon.
Image Credit: iJailbreak
