A hacker who goes by the name Comex (his real name is Nicholas Allegra) achieved fame but hardly fortune recently as the purveyor of JailbreakMe2 and Jailbreak 3, which allow iPhone users to jailbreak their phones.

You would think that this would make him a rogue in the eyes of Apple, which prides itself on the rigid security it maintains in its app universe. So it came as an interesting surprise when Comex, 19, announced to the world via Twitter that he had taken an internship with Apple. In an interview with Forbes, he said, "To work on ways of adding security instead would be kind of refreshing. I guess it's just about the challenge, more than anything else."

You get the feeling that a lot of bright kids who hack for a hobby feel the same way. It makes a lot of sense for the big software players to feel less threatened and more accommodating. Microsoft seems to be trying this approach as well. According to engadget, "The ChevronWP7 guys that brought us the first jailbreak of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 are currently in Redmond having a sitdown and a frank exchange of views with WP7 dev experience director Brandon Watson...Microsoft is clearly taking a light-hearted and community-friendly approach to handling the (now inevitable) efforts at disabling limitations to its software and we can only congratulate its mobile team for doing so."

Microsoft also sent a free handset to another hacker who said on his site that he was going to buy one. This sort of rapprochement will only work to a degree. It will not lessen the number of hardcore criminals out there, but it might help keep some kids on the right side of the track and provide some security insights.

For more:
- here's the engadget article
- here's the Forbes article

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