Excitement levels within the world of iOS are at an all-time hight thanks to the imminent availability of Apple’s iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus hardware. There’s also the addition of the recently released iOS 9 firmware that has caused a storm by managing to find its way onto approximately 50% of compatible devices already. As if interest in the Apple ecosystem wasn’t already at high enough levels, ZERODIUM, the zero-day acquisition platform, has now intensified the spotlight being shone on Apple by putting a $1 million bounty on iOS 9’s head.
If ZERODIUM has never crossed into your focus before, then it’s probably because the company operates fairly discreetly in very specialized circles. The cybersecurity firm essentially specialises in identifying and acquiring potential software exploits in popular platforms, and then sells the details to a number of high-spending customers around the world for various reasons. The firm’s out-of-the-blue iOS 9 bounty either insinuates that it believes Apple’s latest iteration of iOS is extremely secure, therefore making the money safe, or perhaps more likely, it has a client willing to pay big for a browser-based untethered jailbreak of iOS 9.
The firm’s million dollar iOS 9 Bug Bounty was announced today on its website where it called the offering the “world’s biggest zero-day bug bounty program”:
Apple iOS, like all operating system, is often affected by critical security vulnerabilities, however due to the increasing number of security improvements and the effectiveness of exploit mitigations in place, Apple’s iOS is currently the most secure mobile OS. But don’t be fooled, secure does not mean unbreakable, it just means that iOS has currently the highest cost and complexity of vulnerability exploitation and here’s where the Million Dollar iOS 9 Bug Bounty comes into play.
The Million Dollar iOS 9 Bug Bounty is tailored for experienced security researchers, reverse engineers, and jailbreak developers, and is an offer made by ZERODIUM to pay out a total of three million U.S. dollars ($3,000,000.00) in rewards for iOS exploits/jailbreaks.
So, if you’re an individual, or part of a team, who has extensive experience in mobile OS security research, or the abilities to find such a bug, then the Million Dollar iOS 9 Bug Bounty offer is clearly worth a look. The firm has promised to pay out $1 million to each person or team who “creates and submits an exclusive, browser-based, and untethered jailbreak for the latest Apple iOS 9 operating system and devices”.
(source: Reddit)
You may also like to check out:
- iOS 9 Jailbreak Status Update For iPhone And iPad
- Download iOS 9 Final And Install On iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 5s, 5c, 5, 4S, iPad, iPod touch [Tutorial]
You can follow us on Twitter, add us to your circle on Google+ or like our Facebook page to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google, Apple and the Web.