Comex, the person behind the JailBreakMe iPhone software that lets users get bypass Apple’s notoriously strict Digital Rights Management and install any app of their choosing, has been revealed by Forbes thanks to some social media research. The individual who seems to be one step ahead of Apple’s security team at all times turns out to be the 19-year old Nicholas Allegra, a student at Brown University living with his parents in Chappaqua, New York.

In an interview Allegra talked about JailBreakMe, a piece of code that Dino Dai Zovi, co-author of the Mac Hacker’s Handbook compared to have a level of sophistication “on par with that of Stuxnet,” the worm that infected Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“It feels like editing an English paper,” Allegra said. “You just go through and look for errors. I don’t know why I seem to be so effective at it.”

JailBreakMe 3, released back in July, manages to get pass Apple’s retaliation against the previous version which was released last year. iOS now randomizes the location of code in memory, meaning hackers can’t find the commands they want to hijack as easily. Allegra managed to get around this security measure by exploiting a bug in how the OS handles PDF fonts to both locate commands, and automatically jailbreak a given device every time it reboots. Nevertheless, he did recognize the security risk that comes with JailBreakMe, and released a patch for the bug for the two million or so users that jailbreaked their iPhone.

The difference between hacking and jailbreaking is a very small from a technical view, even though the latter has been deemed legal by the U.S. Copyright Office (despite objections by Apple). It didn’t keep George “GeoHot” Hotz, a young hacker that jailbreaked PS3 from getting into hot water. His actions led him into some legal trouble, as well as a couple of more interesting twists including landing him a job at Facebook.

[Photo credit: Nathaniel Welch via Forbes.com]