Apple Inc. has promised to pay a reward of up to $200,000 to researchers who will locate the critical security errors in its products. The company has announced its bug bounty program at the Black Hat Conference. Before Apple, there are many tech companies like Facebook and Micorsoft who have rewarded the researchers for detecting the technical issues in their programs.
Experts say that Apple opted for the bug bounty program as FBI had to pay to crack the security measures of an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino’s shooters.
According to Ivan Krstic, head security engineering and architecture at Apple, finding critical types of security vulnerabilities are difficult which made the Apple to go for such measure.
For time being, Apple’s bounty program will be limited to nearly 2 dozen researchers shortlisted by Apple to find the bugs in its designated categories. They may be the same expert who aided Apple in locating bugs in the past.
It is the biggest reward offering by any company till date for locating bugs. Previous to Apple, FBI offered over $1 million for a tool to deal with the iPhone 5s vulnerabilities used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan.
Likewise, Uber, Department of Defense and Fiat Chrysler have also used the bug bounties program. On the other hand, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have already been running their bounty programs. Microsoft has paid $ 1.5 million to security researchers while Google is said to offer over $2 million to find bugs in Android.