iPhone worm author really goes to work

of course they should be hired and all their work doubly scrutinized, and since he is an admitted wrong doer, anyone who was affected by his malware whould be able to participate in a class action tort against him and recover damages and punitive awards against him. So yes he should be working his ass off to pay back every one he harmed. If he can't do that, then he should not be able to use a computer at all, it's better than going to jail, because he is after all just a criminal.

Ok, this was know to people that jailbroken the iPhone. It was basic code so I hope he
has other talents for developing to keep his job.
But in a security view he gave others the idea to use this same method and cause harm. Did you not read about the worm that fished ING bank account login information. His may not have been that harmfull but he started the threat for others to use the ssh login for malitiouse reasons.

The striking thing about reading the comments of the pro hacker people is that they are not telling the truth about Ashley Towns. He did charge people money to regain control of their jailbroken iPhones until bad publicity forced him to back down. If he does something illegal while working for these developers, they will be held liable. You have to wonder if they considered that before hiring him.

Disagree in this particular case. It wasn't a malicious worm and wasn't widespread enough to do any real harm. Considering the number of iPhones at risk for this type of exploit I think it's hard to argue that the publicity wasn't beneficial. And he was polite enough to plug the hole back up to prevent any other hackers from gaining entrance.
It's like noticing your neighbors door is standing wide open with no car in the driveway and being nice enough to lock it for them but only after leaving them a note written on a Rick Astley poster.

You really have to look at it from the perspective of white hat and black hat hackers... if your doing bad things to people you need to be put in jail... if your joking with people and just playing around and it ultimately helps people know that they need to fix something wrong with there computer/phone then i call you a white hat and think you should be given a award... but if your doing it to be malicious and destroy or take information you need to be thrown in prison... Almost every security/programing company employees white hat hackers to test and make sure that there programs are secure...

I might go so far as to point out that the people being affected, should themselves, be punished - if one is to apply the righteous ire that the author is espousing. After all, they violated the EULA that specifically forbids the jailbreak in the first place. By the implied logic, they "got what they deserve". On the other hand, being the proud owner of a jailbroken iphone, I would say that anyone who is getting pwn'd by the exploit deserves it, since they installed software that they didn't install.

What's to keep him from inserting malicious code into the apps that he will help produce for this company. I'd be hesitant to buy them myelf.

I consider that what the programmer did is wrong. Even though the worm did not caused any damage it can be scary to users to have their phone's background changed without consent.

There are much better ways for programmers to get exposed, like for example creating freeware.

yeah, I think it's pretty obvious that things could have been a lot worse. All three security compromises did little harm, and made everyone aware of a possible vulnerability. In this case, it was a pretty effective psa. In general, anyone who actually causes harm shouldn't be rewarded. However, it's those guys who are most capable of knowing how to stop the same shit that they start. Most of them are doing it as a curious hobby anyway, and just use the world's computers as their proving ground.

Ashley's Worm was actually pretty benign.
It exploited the well publicized hole, made the Phone's owner aware of the problem (and made them look like an idiot at the same time), and then changed the default password ('securing' the known exploit) so nothing else untoward will happen to the victims phone (through the same hole).

It's a lot more Noble than charging victims a fee for instructions on how to undo the damage or phishing financial information out of victims.