Ikee worm author gets job at iPhone app firm
The author of the world's first iPhone worm must be feeling pretty chirpy today, because he's managed to get himself a job as an iPhone application developer. — 21-year-old Australian Ashley Towns, revealed that he was going to join mogeneration …
Context & Ripple Effects
The iPhone’s developer ecosystem had been expanding alongside a visible security problem: coverage in November 2009 explained how to secure jailbroken devices, and a malicious iPhone worm surfaced days before this hiring. Ashley Towns’s iKee work sits in that same arc, where platform knowledge could expose weak user practices as well as support application development.
Mogeneration’s decision to hire Towns turns a figure associated with the first iPhone worm into a commercial iPhone developer, underscoring how scarce platform-specific technical knowledge is becoming as the app market develops.
First-order effects
- Mogeneration gains Ashley Towns as an iPhone application developer, bringing his direct familiarity with the iPhone environment into its development team.
- Towns moves from creating iKee to paid work in the app sector, tying his professional reputation to commercial software delivery.
Second-order effects
- Mogeneration’s hire makes security awareness a more tangible differentiator for iPhone app firms operating while users are being advised to secure jailbroken iPhones.
- Other iPhone developers face a market in which hands-on knowledge of the platform—including knowledge revealed by worms—has measurable hiring value.
Third-order effects
- If app firms continue to recruit developers with deep platform and security experience, early mobile-software labor markets will reward practical device expertise rather than treating security work as separate from product development.
- The sequence from an early Apple worm to malicious iPhone malware points to mobile security becoming part of the app ecosystem’s operating requirements, especially around modified devices.
The trend: The early iPhone app economy is converging software development and security expertise as mobile-platform use and threats grow together.