Many hackers who pull illegal computer-related pranks leave their life of cybercrime to work at big companies where their computer skills are highly valued. Two examples of hackers who were offered jobs after their pranks are Johnny Chung Lee and Chris Putnam.
Johnny Chung Lee
Johnny Chung Lee received his doctorate from the Carnegie Melon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. In 2008, Lee hacked into the Nintendo Wii Remote using ballpoint pens and infrared lights. He demonstrated the uses of these hacks in Youtube videos, allowing schools and workplaces to make their own interactive whiteboard for hundreds of dollars less than buying a commercial interactive whiteboard. This feat helped to name him one of the World's top 35 innovators under the age of 35.
His work on enhancing the functionality of the Wii Remote controller is quite an accomplishment, as well as his work in Microsoft's Applied Sciences Department developing human tracking algorithms for the Kinect gaming device. Lee worked on the project for three years, from back when it was called Project Natal, to its outstanding release to the public, where it sold 8 million units in its first 60 days of release. Later, Google hired Lee as an evaluator of their experimental applications, much to the disappointment of Microsoft. His role as a Rapid Evaluator is unclear, but there are speculations that it may involve Google's rumoured Gaming portal.
Lee believes that technology has the power to touch millions, if only the technologists understand that they must create beautiful technology for the public, not just for other technologists. On his personal blog, Lee has stated: "As an engineer, as a technologist, as a researcher, or inventor... I encourage you understand the power of stories. A story isn't merely the sequence of events in a book or film. It can be a story about you, and how your life or the lives of the people around you could be a bit different... or how the world could be different than it is today."
Chris Putnam
Three undergraduate students: Marcel Laverdet, Kyle Stoneman, and Chris Putnam at Georgia Southern University created a worm in 2005 that would change their lives forever. This XSS-based worm infected Facebook profiles by way of an unsanitized profile field (websites), and changed them to look exactly like the profiles found on MySpace. The worm silently and rapidly copied itself while friends viewed each other's profiles.
As the worm made more and more damages, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz contacted Chris Putnam, one of the students involved. The message said: "Hey, this was funny but it looks like you are deleting contact information from users' profiles when you go to replicate the worm again. That's so not cool."
Putnam and Moskovitz continued to correspond, and when Putnam quit college, he was offered an interview with Facebook. Initially, Putnam was wary of heading out to Silicon Valley, as he was worried that they would have him arrested as soon as he stepped on company property. It turned out that the interview wasn't a set up, and Kyle was offered the job. This was quite an accomplishment, as most engineers aren't hired without a professional degree. Laverdet, Pudnam's fellow hacker, was convinced to drop out of school and started working at Facebook as well. The last hacker, Stoneman, graduated from school and continues to work on tech projects in the political world. Pudnam has stated that he is "forever grateful that the company was so sympathetic toward people like myself. It's one of the things that really sets Facebook apart with its passion for scrappy, hacker-type engineers."
http://www.offbeatenough.com/interesting-stuff/10-hackers-who-got-legit-jobs-from-illegal-practices/
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