Things like this actually happen pretty commonly. Governments and business alike frequently hire the people who can hack into their systems. The logic going is that if you’re smart enough to hack into a database, you’re smart enough to help better safeguard it. For one 14 year old Irish boy, a job offer at Microsoft came just this way.
He managed to break into the online servers for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and start a phishing scam to get personal information from players. This particular event took place around the same time a hack attack took down the entire Playstation Network some time ago, so Microsoft was understandably eager to bolster their defenses.
The Managing Director of Microsoft Ireland revealed that Microsoft planned to work with the teenager to help develop his talent to groom him for a career.