Facebook Hires Hacker George Hotz, IPhone And PlayStation 3 Jailbreaker: REPORT (UPDATE)

Facebook Reportedly Hires iPhone, PlayStation Hacker

*Scroll down for update.*

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em--or, in Facebook's case, hire 'em full time.

According to TechUnwrapped, Facebook now employs George Hotz, the young hacker who has drawn the legal ire of tech giants Apple and Sony. Hotz, who also goes by the online handle "Geohot," is said to be working at Facebook, possibly on a secretive new iPad app.

TechUnwrapped reported on Saturday that Chronic-Dev Team member Joshua Hill first outed Hotz's status at Facebook. During an online interview, Hill stated that Hotz had backed out of an iPad 2 hacking challenge because of his current day job at the social network.

Techmeme's Gabe Rivera later tweeted that Hotz's Facebook profile corroborated Hill's claims.

"Facebook is really an amazing place to work...first hackathon over," reads a June 22 post on Hotz's Facebook wall.

A Facebook spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

In 2007, Hotz gained notoriety for jailbreaking Apple's iPhone, allowing the handset (and, subsequently, other devices running Apple's iOS software) to be used outside AT&T's network.

Then, in 2010, Hotz published a jailbreak for Sony's PlayStation 3 gaming console, which Sony countered with a high-profile suit against Hotz in early 2011. The company eventually settled with Hotz out of court, but their action against the hacker led to a major cyberattack on the PlayStation gaming network that was allegedly carried out by hacktivist collective Anonymous. A host of other attacks on the PSN followed, including one that led Sony to take the entire global network offline for weeks.

UPDATE: According to Read Write Web, Facebook has confirmed that George Hotz is an employee at the social network, though a spokesperson divulged no further details.

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