7 Hackers Who Got Legit Jobs From Their Misdeeds

adeelarshad82 writes "Just like in Stephen Glass' fabricated feature where a lonely teenage hacker gets hired by a major software company, the 21 year old PlayStation 3 hacker, George "Geohot" Hotz, was offered a job at Facebook. Ironically Hotz wasn't the first school-aged hacker to be rewarded for his cyber-crime rather than a prison sentence. Turns out there are others who have managed (with one exception) to avoid jail time, and instead found themselves gainfully employed by some of Silicon Valley's most exclusive circles."

Comments

Meh

[dexomn]

GeoHot != Criminal

Re:Meh

[Moryath]

If we had competent courts rather than a mockery of a court system run by corrupt "lawyers" and bribed/senile judges, those provisions would long ago have been declared unconscionable and therefore unenforceable anyways, much like "non-compete clauses" have routinely been found unconscionable.

Re:Meh

[luis_a_espinal]

If we had competent courts rather than a mockery of a court system run by corrupt "lawyers" and bribed/senile judges, those provisions would long ago have been declared unconscionable and therefore unenforceable anyways, much like "non-compete clauses" have routinely been found unconscionable.

Emotional-driven generalization != truth.

What crime? What misdeeds?

[jjo]

Geohot didn't do anything illegal, so why is he a 'criminal'? How is restoring the Linux functionality that Sony originally sold, and then disabled though updates, a 'misdeed'?

Hotz isn't just some script kiddie

[elrous0]

This wasn't the case of some phone-phreaker or wardriver getting hired. Hotz was an actual skilled hacker, with some pretty serious reverse-engineering and programming abilities. He wasn't just some asshole who figured out a password or slightly modified some virus code.