Perhaps you're thinking of Bunnie Huang, who wrote a book about reversing the xbox. I love Bunnie because he seems to be in it for the joy and the sharing of information.

Geohot (IIUC) hacked the iphone because apple didn't allow devs to run their own code at launch, and the playstation because sony removed the ability to run linux on the console. I love geohot because he seems to be in it to stick it to the man.