Apple Bug Bounty Program Offering $1 Million Prize Money

Apple is back with its bug bounty program which the company closed previously. Once again the program will allow security researchers to find vulnerability in Apple products. Security researchers who report vulnerability to the company will receive bounty rewards. The reward will depend on the impact of the vulnerability.

The bug bounty program is said to offer a maximum reward amount of up to $1 million. The company has also divided the bounty categories which include iCloud, network attacking via users interaction, and drive attacks which are performed via physical attacks.

There is a list of rules which Apple has created for security researchers which they have to obey very strictly. Here are the rules:

Being a part of the program, one can't compromise or damage data owned by other users. In case if you are planning to do so, then you have to take written permission from the owner.

You're also not allowed to disrupt Apple services. You can also not access system which is related to Apple Pay. Apple Pay is not coming under the Apple Security Bounty program.

"Apple Security Bounty payments may not be issued to you if you are (a) in any U.S. embargoed countries or (b) on the U.S. Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals or the U.S. Department of Commerce Denied Person's List or Entity List or any other restricted party lists," reads Apple blog post.

The company has also listed divided reward amounts based on categories. According to the page, a security researcher who is successful in network attack without "users' interaction or with zero-click kernel code execution with persistence and kernel PAC bypass" will be rewarded with $1,000,000. Also do note that the unique vulnerabilities which are unknown in past will receive 50 percent addition bounty.

Apple introduced this bug bounty program back in 2016, where the company offered up to $200,000 to researchers for reporting impactful vulnerabilities in Apple's security system.