At the Hexacon offensive security conference in Paris last week, Ivan Krstić, Apple vice president of security engineering and architecture announced a new maximum payout of $2 million in Apple's Security Bounty Program for a chain of software exploits that could be abused for spyware.

Since the public Apple Security Bounty program was launched in 2020, over $35 million has been paid out to more than 800 security researchers, with multiple individual reports earning $500,000 rewards. 

The announcement of the $2 million reward comes together with  news of an updated and expanded Apple Security Bounty program featuring the industry’s highest rewards, expanded research categories, and a flag system for researchers to objectively demonstrate vulnerabilities and obtain accelerated awards.

This table shows the current and upgraded rewards:

Top rewards are for exploits that are similar to the most sophisticated, real-world threats, that work on Apple's latest hardware and software, and that use its new Target Flags.

According to the Apple Security Research blog:

Target Flags, inspired by capture-the-flag competitions, are built into our operating systems and allow us to rapidly review the issue and process a resulting reward, even before we release a fix.

When researchers demonstrate security issues using Target Flags, the specific flag that’s captured objectively demonstrates a given level of capability — for example, register control, arbitrary read/write, or code execution — and directly correlates to the reward amount, making the award determination more transparent than ever.

Using Target Flags means that researchers can expect to be paid more promptly:

Because Target Flags can be programmatically verified by Apple as part of submitted findings, researchers who submit eligible reports with Target Flags will receive notification of their bounty award immediately upon our validation of the captured flag. Confirmed rewards will be issued in an upcoming payment cycle rather than when a fix becomes available, underscoring the trust we've built with our core researcher community.

Target Flags are supported on all Apple platforms,  iOS, iPadOS, macOS, visionOS, watchOS, and tvOS. They cover a number of Apple Security Bounty areas, and coverage will expand over time.

In theory total payouts can exceed $5 million when combining the base reward with bonuses for issues found in beta software and bypasses of advanced security features like Lockdown Mode, which is the optional, extreme protection feature designed by Apple to protect users who may be at risk of being personally targeted by highly sophisticated cyberattacks.

More Information

Apple Security Bounty

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