LAS VEGAS — Apple, which has been criticized in recent years for failing to pay outside hackers who report bugs in its products, said on Thursday that it would begin offering a so-called bug bounty to technologists who alert the company to flaws.

At the Black Hat hacking conference, Apple announced a list of vulnerabilities that would command big bounties, including $25,000 for ways around Apple’s digital compartments and into its customers’ data, $50,000 for bugs that give hackers a way into iCloud data, and $200,000 to turn over critical vulnerabilities in Apple’s firmware — the software that lies closest to the bare metal of the machine.

Apple said that if hackers donated their rewards to charity, it would match their donation. “We want to reward the people, and frankly the creativity it takes to find bugs in these categories,” said Ivan Krstic, Apple’s head of security engineering and architecture.

For six years, nearly every company in Silicon Valley has been rewarding hackers who turn over bugs — a term for flaws that can make a product vulnerable to intrusion — in their systems, with cash. The hope is that the money will be an incentive to keep those flaws out of the hands of organized groups or spy agencies willing to pay big money to learn about them.