Apple is rewarding cybersecurity researchers up to USD 1 million (around Rs 7 crores) to detect flaws in iPhones and Macs. The announcement of the same was made by the company at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas on Thursday, where Apple’s head of security engineering Ivan Krstić gave a talk on iOS and macOS security. The amount offered by Apple Inc. is by far the largest bug bounty on offer from any major tech company, reported Forbes.
In its announcement, Apple said that it is expanding its existing bug bounty program to include macOS, tvOS, watchOS, and iCloud. The latest reward of USD 1 million is up from Apple's previous highest bounty of USD 200,000 (around Rs 1.41 crores). Government contractors and brokers have so far paid as much as USD 2 million (around 14 crores) for hacking techniques to obtain devices' information. The latest bounty announced by Apple is in the same range as some published prices from contractors.
Apart from this, Apple is taking other steps to make research easier, including a modified phone that has some security measures disabled. According to The Verge report, the updated bug bounty program will aid Apple to convince more security researchers to report vulnerabilities to the company. As per the report, earlier in 2019, a security researcher detailed a macOS flaw but refused to submit it to Apple until the company pays researchers for Mac security flaws.
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