After his high profile ‘stunt’ of creating the first iPhone worm in the world, 21-year-old Ashley Towns, a Wollongong TAFE student, has been hired by Australian iPhone app developer Mogeneration – a move that is being widely despised by security experts!

Towns, the so-called ‘Ikee’ worm creator, caught international attention for developing a program that re-set the wallpaper of a phone to feature a picture of the 1980s pop star Rick Astley. Towns said that the worm he created affects only the ‘jailbroken’ iPhones – the modified iPhones that run applications not approved by Apple.

However, the Ikee worm, though not a malicious one, has supposedly provided the template for the more ominous ‘Duh’ worm, which is designed to steal online banking credentials.

Boasting of his latest accomplishment of having found a job, Towns recently wrote on his Twitter feed that the firm which has hired him touts itself as the “leading iPhone development company” in Australia.

Confirming Towns’ appointment, a Mogeneration spokesman told the BBC: “We interviewed Ashley, assessed him with our iPhone developer test - which he passed with flying colours - and we employed him today.”

Meanwhile, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security firm Sophos, has expressed his disgust at the Mogeneration decision to hire Ashley, and has argued that by giving job to a known hacker, the company is sending out the wrong signal.