After much of delay and speculations, the long awaited Apple bug bounty program is here. At Black Hat conference, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) announced that the company is in the planning stage to launch its first-ever bug bounty program in September. It came as a surprise to many as most of the major announcements that are made by Apple always takes place at WWDC.
Reportedly, the Cupertino giant is slated to offer up to $200,000 for successfully pointing out bugs and security related issues in its devices. The company has agreed that its in-house researchers, testers, and contract security firms are having some major difficulties in identifying many bugs.
The Program would be launched on an invite-only basis. But in case a non-invitee comes up with an important security issue or a bug, he would be automatically invited to the program. A proof of concept would be required by Apple if one successfully points out a bug to be eligible for the reward. After that, Apple would look into the matter and accordingly determine the reward. The elements that would play a role in determining the reward include clarity of bug report, novelty, exposure limit and degree of interaction with the user.
Apple Bug Bounty Program
The risks that would determine the reward are:
- Vulnerability in secure boot firmware components – up to $200,000
- Bugs that would allow extraction of confidential material from Security Enclave – up to $100,000
- Execution of arbitrary or malicious code with kernel privileges – up to $50,000
- Predicting the Unauthorized access to iCloud account data on Apple Servers – up to $50,000
- Access from a sandboxed process to user data outside the sandbox – up to $25,000
“We believe that these payment amounts ($200,000) are commensurate with the level of difficulty in attacking some of these systems.” announced by Ivan Krstic, Head of Security engineering and architecture at Apple at the Black Hat conference.
According to Securosis CEO, Rich Mogull, iOS security enthusiast, the relationship between Apple and its researchers have been on a rough patch from quite long. Therefore, the bug bounty program launched by Apple may be regarded as a wise move.
Major breaches haunted Apple in the past
In the past, Apple iCloud suffered major security breaches including the celebrity cloud photo hack. $200,000 appears quite minuscule when we compare the amount to what FBI paid (around $1 million) to the third-party hackers to unlock the iPhone of the shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, involved in San Bernardino attack in the last year.
Apple’s iOS and Mac are considered as the most secure OS in the world. On the contrary, the iOS that runs the iPhone sits at the number 2 position in the list of most vulnerable OS with 375 vulnerabilities according to a report. Ironically, the Android OS that is assumed to be most vulnerable OS in the world sits at the 20th spot on the list with 130 vulnerabilities.
Bug Bounty: A new venture?
Bug bounties have been a common phenomenon in Information Technology sector. But recently, automotive industries including Tesla Motors, General Motors, Uber, and Fiat Chrysler are also among the firms that have launched these kinds of programs. It surprises many as the futuristic vehicles rely heavily on Artificial intelligence and software that are prone to various vulnerabilities.
Earlier, Google shelled out a whopping $550,000 to 82 researchers who successfully pointed out the Vulnerabilities in Android platform. Since the launch of its Android Reward program, the Silicon Valley giant has awarded $1.5 million to the researchers who have reported vulnerabilities in its Google and Chrome Products.
Twitter also paid a considerable $322,420 in bounties in an attempt to make the social network vulnerability free over the span of two years. Despite, there have been a series of Twitter account hacks of famous celebrities recently.
