>In 2017, however, Solnik was hired by Apple to work on its security team, specifically on the so-called red team, which audits and hacks the company’s products. His talk at Black Hat had apparently impressed the folks at Cupertino. A few weeks later, however, he abruptly left the company, according to multiple sources.

>The full story of Solnik’s short stint at Apple is a closely-guarded secret. Motherboard spoke to dozens of people and was unable to confirm the specifics around his leaving the company; one source within Apple told me information about Solnik is “incredibly restricted,” and another confirmed that even within Apple, few know exactly what happened.

Why hire someone that was previously selling "offensive security tools and exploits to governments" into a sensitive role like that? It's incredibly naive to think that just because you're employing them now that they are actually loyal to you. Surely the insider threat is greater than any expertise that person has. Just pay them a bug bounty for specific information and keep them at arms length. Finding high integrity security researchers to hire is more important than raw talent.