Jailbreaker Geohot Joins Google’s Project Zero’s Team Of Hackers

A couple of days ago, Google announced Project Zero which is basically Google’s plan to keep the internet safe. This is done by keeping an eye out for potential vulnerabilities across all sorts of software and platforms, and then helping the developers plug it up before it gets out of hand and something bad happens.

To do that, Google would have to put together a dream team of hackers, and it seems that one of those hackers has been revealed to be none other than George Hotz, who also goes by the handle geohot. For those unfamiliar with Hotz, he was the first person in the world to jailbreak the iPhone back in 2007 at the age of 17, and has since gone on to release several more jailbreaks and hacks, one of which involved the PlayStation 3 which landed Hotz in a spot of trouble with Sony.

While Hotz had already achieved notoriety, he was approached by Chris Evans, a Google security engineer, after he had won the $150,000 prize at Google’s Pwnium hacking competition where he managed to hack through the security of Chrome OS. He was offered the position as a paid intern where he worked alongside Ben Hawkes, Tavis Ormandy, and Brit Ian Beer.

Hotz will be part of the small but elite team of hackers under the Project Zero banner at Google. The Mountain View company is said to be on the lookout for more members to add to the team and have plans to add at least ten full-time hackers in the near future. It’s an interesting effort by Google and we have to wonder how it will work out in the long-run.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Web
Tags: Google, Hacking, project zero, Security