Famed hacker and former Microsoft employee, Kristin Paget, is apparently now working for Apple as a core operating system security researcher. The news suggests that the Cupertino California company is improving OS X safeguards amid recent Mac-directed malware attacks, which continue to surface.
Paget previous worked alongside a small team of hackers whose goal was to find security holes in Windows Vista before the operating system was released to the public in 2007 when employed by Microsoft. The group apparently found so many flaws that Vista’s launch date was pushed back until fixes were put in place for all the issues found.
Based on her LinkedIn profile, Paget, as of September, listed herself as being a “Core OS Security Researcher at Apple” based out of Cupertino. The position she held immediately before this was chief hacker at security firm, Recursion Ventures, but she mentioned in June that she wanted to find a job building “security-focused hardware.” For those of you who aren’t familiar with her, Paget gained notoriety for a number of hacker feats of strength, including a cellphone call-intercepting station at the Defcon hacker conference and a long-ranged RFID identifier duplication device.
Although her responsibilities at Apple remain unknown, it can be speculated that she will be working to fight off future attacks similar to the Flashback Trojan that previously infected an estimated 600,000 Macs and the Mac-targeted malware that was recently found embedded on a Dalai Lama dedicated webpage. Hopefully, consumers will reap the benefits of her work at Apple in the near future.
Source: LinkedIn, Wired
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