Forbes Profiles Nicholas Allegra A.K.A. Comex

Forbes profiles Nicholas Allegra a.k.a. Comex, the hacker who brought us JailbreakMe, in a new article published online.

Nicholas Allegra lives with his parents in Chappaqua, New York. The tall, shaggy-haired and bespectacled 19-year old has been on leave from Brown University since last winter, looking for an internship. And in the meantime, he's been spending his days on a hobby that periodically sends shockwaves through the computer security world: seeking out cracks in the source code of Apple's iPhone, a device with more software restrictions than practically any computer on the market, and exploiting them to utterly obliterate its defenses against hackers.

Forbes quotes several security experts in the article who have high praise for the sophistication of comex's jailbreak.

Dino Dai Zovi, co-author of the Mac Hacker's Handbook, says JailbreakMe's sophistication is on par with that of Stuxnet, a worm thought to have been designed by the Israeli or U.S. government to infect Iran's nuclear facilities. He compares Allegra's skills to the state-sponsored intruders that plague corporations and governments, what the cybersecurity industry calls "advanced-persistent threat" hackers: "He's probably five years ahead of them," says Dai Zovi.


Well respected hacker Charlie Miller also had high praise for comex saying, "I didn't think anyone would be able to do what he's done for years. Now it's been done by some kid we had never even heard of. He's totally blown me away."

Check out the article at the link below for the full story.

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