Saima Ikram
Apple, a one trillion dollar company is very particular about its reputation. Just a few hours back, the company gave a little headache to major VOIP companies by breaking the news that Apple iOS 13 will restrict VoIP background data collection from Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Snapchat
Now, Apple has increased the bug bounty offers to hackers for finding loopholes, vulnerabilities in iPhone and Mac. The price is up to $1 million. It is the highest offered by any tech company to ethical hackers in history till now.
The previous prize was $200k. The program will be open to all researchers this fall which is a huge change as it will allow every company, individual to participate in the program, unlike previously where the invite-only hackers were eligible to receive the rewards.
According to Forbes, Apple is also launching a Mac bug bounty and that program extends to watchOS and its Apple TV operating system too.
The announcements were made in Las Vegas at the Black Hat conference. Apple’s head of security engineering Ivan Krstić talked about iOS and macOS security.
Forbes also says Apple will give participants “developer devices iPhones” that would let ethical hackers dig deep into iOS to work more freely.
$1 million for an iPhone Hack:
$1 million rewards will go to researchers who can find a hack of the kernel, it is the core of iOS with zero clicks required by the iPhone owner. Next reward is $500,000, it is for those who can find a “network attack requiring no user interaction.” Apple says it will also give a 50% bonus for hackers who can find weaknesses, code vulnerabilities in software before it’s officially released.
The news originally appeared on Forbes website
