Hacker News Reader

Comment by aliqot | Hacker News Reader

When it's your actual track record it's not bragging. It's just facts.

edit: apparently this is a hot take to some, but no real substantive refuting of what's being said- only appeals to greater authority. "Well so and so was smarter"

View on HN

Geohots actual track record isn’t that impressive though, he’s just one exploit dev with an OK portfolio.

>edit: apparently this is a hot take to some, but no real substantive refuting of what's being said- only appeals to greater authority. "Well so and so was smarter"

Do you happen to have substantive evidence to back up the original claim?

It's always fun to see anonymous users saying someone else isn't "that impressive though". He managed to breach the security of three different platforms (iOS, Android and PlayStation) across multiple devices, which feels a lot like more than most security researchers manage to do in their lifetime, while geohot is about 35 by now.

Or, you have some good examples that the average security researcher have a better track record than that?

I knew a few security people at Google and frankly, geohot isn't even in their class. He's a smart guy. Did some stuff. isn't particularly special or significantly better than a typical engineer in my experience. Mainly he seems to jump deep into things he doesn't know much about (I'm talking about post-security) and say a bunch of irresponsible things then fail to deliver a complete product, entirely predictably.

He's the sort of person you want to ensconce in a safe place far from others, with the freedom to experiment, to come up with disruptive ideas to influence others.

> I knew a few security people at Google and frankly, geohot isn't even in their class.

This is an exceptional claim, who might these people be and what initiatives do they lead?

The first one I'm thinking of is Michal Zalewski who wrote AFL and is now the VP of Security Engineering at Snap. Also Lea Kissner who implemented security for stubby and now runs Info Security for Twitter (one of the few remaining engineering departments Musk wants to keep) But there were a bunch of folks, most of whom you've never heard of, because they were quietly solving problems behind the scenes. Damien Menscher comes to mind- he was core to Google's DoS blocking which had a massive impact on users for the last decade.

> there were a bunch of folks, most of whom you've never heard of, because they were quietly solving problems

I figured you'd say this. Just had to see you type the words out. Don't be angry when those you seek to refute don't see you worth arguing with when this is the type of rhetoric you have.

Sounds like you're trolling? OK/ If you're operating in good faith, I honestly don't see your point about rhetoric. His performance is not atypical in silicon valley, a place where I have been an engineer and academic for 3 decades. That's all.

This is a lazy troll. Geohot is famous because he used to loudly brag about his achievements.

The people making millions selling exploits to the likes of Vupen/Zerodium have very strong incentive to keep their mouths shut.

> I knew a few security people at Google and frankly, geohot isn't even in their class

Who, exactly, are you talking about here? And what are their track record?

> Or, you have some good examples that the average security researcher have a better track record than that?

Geohot can be simultaneously be significantly above average, and not anywhere near as special as some people on HN like to represent him.

He certainly doesn’t have anywhere near the track record to not seem downright unhinged in the context of this blog post.

Getting a cease and desist from Sony for finding the master key is pretty impressive.

Except he also jailbroke the first iPhone. Doing it twice is beyond impressive and proves he's the real deal.

He's a smart, talented guy, but it takes a very different set of skills to break other peoples' stuff than it does to create it in the first place. George never had much patience for the organization of people -- he's got something of a superiority complex, or at least he believes other people are almost always focused on the wrong things. This bias is true, to a degree, but it isn't perfectly true, and George was always destined to run with those who actually can and do give him a run for his money, and to run up against the limitations of his technical abilities.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com