Apple Is Offering $1.5 Million For Anyone Who Can Hack An Iphone

Apple has announced that it will give a bounty of 1 million US dollars to anyone who will be able to hack iPhones and Macs.

This is a massive increase of the reward that was once priced at 200,000 dollars and it is by far the highest bounty ever offered by any tech company.

In order to win the reward, the hackers are supposed to find vulnerabilities in iPhones and Macs and report them to the smartphone maker.

The hacking program will be open to all researchers where an additional reward of 500,000 US dollars will be given to those who can find a “network attack requiring no user interaction” and also a 50 percent bonus for hackers who can find weaknesses in software before it is released officially.

Apple has taken this step by distributing a more hacker-friendly iPhone to its favorite researchers, letting them hack the phone on “easy mode” in the interest of making it harder for everyone else.

The smartphone maker has also announced bounties for Mac, WatchOS and Apple TV.

Apple says it will start distributing the security devices research next year which will offer users a “root” shell by default, letting researchers run commands on the phone with the highest privileges.

The researchers will also be tasked with the responsibility of unlocking the iPhone devices. Forbes reports that Apple devices are so locked down, that even well-intentioned security researchers have trouble getting the access necessary to dig into their internals.

Ivan Krstić, Apple’s head of security engineering and architecture, announced a broad revamping of the company’s bug bounty program.

“We have by far the highest maximum payouts in the industry, and we have the iOS security research device program for exceptional researchers that are new to our platform,” Krstić said.

“The second-best reason to have a bug bounty is to find out about a vulnerability that’s already in the users’ hands and fix it quickly. The number one best reason is to find a vulnerability before it ever hits a customer’s hands. “he added.

The bounties are open to everyone, including those researchers who have previously been locked out of Apple’s bounty program or even denied bounties for serious vulnerabilities in Apple software other than iOS.

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