George Hotz, the infamous hacker how was able to jailbrake and reverse engineer the Sony PlayStation 3 has been hired by Facebook, according to ReadWriteWeb. Hotz just settled a court case with Sony in April for cracking the code that allowed third-party software to be installed on the PS3. He is also a skilled iPhone hacker, and goes by the name GeoHot.
Sony claimed that Hotz’s actions had violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as well as the Computer Fraud Abuse Act. As part of the settlement, Hotz agreed not to publish any more code. This ruling angered a number of other hackers, which caused the PlayStation Network to be hacked and millions of PSN users’ personal information compromised. As a result, the PSN was down for three weeks costing Sony $24 million.
No specific details were given about Hotz’s duties at Facebook. I find it ironic that Sony Pictures was responsible for The Social Network, so I guess you could say this is Mark Zuckerberg’s way of getting back at the company for depicting him in an unflattering manner. In reality the hiring is likely because Hotz is truly on the cutting edge of code knowlege so his addition is a smart move for the company.
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