Apple hacker extraordinaire takes an internship at Apple

Apple, whose iOS security Allegra has repeatedly and publicly dismantled, has given an internship to iPhone-hacking wunderkind Nicholas Allegra, also known as Comex, the Forbes magazine reported Friday.

Allegra wrote on his Twitter feed Thursday, “It’s been really, really fun, but it’s also been a while and I’ve been getting bored,” the report said. “So, the week after next I will be starting an internship with Apple.”

Allegra, 19, is the author of JailbreakMe 2 and Jailbreak 3, two hacks for iOS that allowed millions of people to remove all download restrictions on an iPhone or iPad simply by visiting a website.

Some jailbreaking enthusiasts, on the other hand, who saw JailbreakMe as a way to gain more freedom on their devices, may view Allegra’s move to Apple as a betrayal, the magazine said. After all, he’ll now likely be laboring to tighten Apple’s already tight restrictions on its operating systems.

But Andy Greenberg, a staff member of Forbes who interviewed Allegra, said he told him last month that he never saw jailbreaking as an idealistic struggle for more user control, and said that he would consider working for what he called “the dark side.”

He said at the time, “To work on ways of adding security instead would be kind of refreshing,” according to the magazine. “I guess it’s just about the challenge, more than anything else.”

Allegra called himself an Apple “fanboy,” and said he sees Android’s more open platform as “the enemy,” Forbes said.