George ‘GeoHot’ Hotz, the hacker who rose to infamy when he unlocked the iPhone and jailbroke the PlayStation 3 (leading to a series of events that culminated in absolute disaster for Sony in 2010), has apparently been recruited by Google to work on a top secret security initiative called ‘Project Zero,’ Gamespot reports. Apparently, his hiring has to do with Hotz having unearthed an exploit in Google Chrome that won him $150,000.
Speaking of Project Zero, Google said, “You should be able to use the web without fear that a criminal or state-sponsored actor is exploiting software bugs to infect your computer, steal secrets, or monitor your communications. Yet in sophisticated attacks, we see the use of ‘zero-day’ vulnerabilities to target, for example, human rights activists or to conduct industrial espionage. This needs to stop. We think more can be done to tackle this problem.
“Every bug we discover will be filed in an external database. We will only report bugs to the software’s vendor–and no third parties.”
This isn’t even Hotz’s first big gig- prior to this, he was working at Facebook.
I guess the best way to preserve big game is to ask the best hunter just how he gets to it all in the first place.