Forbes Profiles Famous Apple Hacker ‘Comex’ of JailbreakMe.com
If you’re ever used JailbreakMe.com, then you’ve seen the miraculous work of iPhone hacker, @comex. He has managed to stay out of the limelight, but his ingenious hacking skills have not.
Forbes has revealed @comex as 19 year old Nicholas Allegra, a Brown University student that lives with his parents in Chappaqua, New York:
The young hacker taught himself to code in the programming language Visual Basic at the age of nine, gleaning tricks from Web forums. “By the time I took a computer science class in high school, I already knew everything,†he says. When he found that he couldn’t save a screenshot from the Nintendo Wii video game Super Smash Brothers to his computer, he spent hours deciphering the file, and later worked on other Wii hacks, getting a feel for its obscure operating system.
“I didn’t come out of the same background as the rest of the security community,†he says. “So to them I seem to have come out of nowhere.â€
In response to the Wii part, comes had this to say on twitter:
The Wii part is slightly inaccurate. It was the checksum, and it only took so long because I was a total assembly noob at the time.
It’s a fascinating read if you want to know more about @comex. Check it out here.