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Apple has just announced the highest bounty ever offered by a tech company. Apple is offering hackers $1 Million in order to catch any bugs in iPhones and Macs.

Previously this amount was $200,000. This program which offers $1 Million will open to all researchers in fall this year.

Earlier such rewards were restricted to the members of the company’s invite-only bug bounty program.

Apple has confirmed on launching such bounties for Mac, watchOS and Apple TV’s operating system as well. This announcement was made in Las Vegas at the Black Hat conference where Ivan Krstic gave, head of security engineering gave a talk on iOS.

This news was reported by Forbes on Monday and later confirmed on Thursday by Apple.

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Bug Bounty Participants will be given developer devices

Forbes has reported that the company will be providing developer devices to the bug bounty participants. The participants can try and hack these iPhones.

$1 Million for hacking an iPhone and what else?

The entire amount of $1 Million will be awarded to the researchers who can hack the kernel, the core of iOS.

The ones who can find a network attack without any user interaction, another $500,000 will be awarded. There is also a 50% bonus for those who can find loopholes in software before it’s release.

The whole agenda behind putting such a huge reward prize is to face the ever-increasing profitable private market. So that instead of selling the information to the government, hackers can earn a bigger amount themselves.

Maor Shwartz told Forbes, the cost of a single exploit can fetch as much as $1.5 million. Only about 2 get sold each year, selected from 400 high-end hackers.

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Zerodium offered $2 Million for a remote hack

In January, Zerodium, a secretive company put a tag of $2 million on the hacker who can hack an iPhone remotely.

In the past, the company has been open about how much it is willing to pay hackers or researchers before handing them to the unknown government clients.

Since the launch in 2016, the bug bounty has been a success. Around 50 serious bugs have been reported.

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