iOS 9 Hacking Bounty Has Been Set at $1 Million

An exploit trader that goes by the name of Zerodium, has today announced a $1 million bounty for any new flaws in iOS 9, that would allow an attacker to compromise a non-jailbroken iPhone or iPad device through a web page, in-app browsing action or a text message. Zerodium has announced that it will pay that hefty sum to anyone who gives the company a hacking technique that can take over an iOS device remotely.

“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”.

Zerodium notes that the million dollar iOS 9 bug bounty is tailored for experienced security researchers, reverse engineers and jailbreak developers, and that they have offered to pay out a total of three million U.S. dollars ($3,000,000) in rewards for iOS exploits or jailbreaks.

“ZERODIUM will pay out one million U.S. dollars ($1,000,000.00) to each individual or team who creates and submits to ZERODIUM an exclusive, browser-based, and untethered jailbreak for the latest Apple iOS 9 operating system and devices.”

The program, which is open until October 31st, 2015 at 6:00 p.m., clearly reflects just how difficult it has become to penetrate Apple’s increasing layers of iOS security.