Apple offers rewards for bugs

Apple Inc said it plans to offer rewards of up to $2,00,000 to researchers who find critical security bugs in its products, joining dozens of firms that already offer payments for help uncovering flaws in their products.

The maker of iPhones and iPads provided Reuters with details of the plan, which includes some of the biggest bounties offered to date, ahead of unveiling it on Thursday afternoon at the Black Hat cyber security conference in Las Vegas.

The programme will initially be limited to about two dozen researchers who Apple will invite to help identify hard-to-uncover security bugs in five specific categories.

Those researchers have been chosen from the group of experts who have previously helped Apple identify bugs, but have not been compensated for that work, the company said.

The most lucrative category, which offers rewards of up to $2,00,000, is for bugs in Apple’s “secure boot” firmware for preventing unauthorised programs from launching when an iOS device is powered up.

Apple said it decided to limit the scope of the programme at the advice of other companies that have previously launched bounty programmes.

Those companies said that if they were to do it again, they would start by inviting a small list of researchers to join, then gradually open it up over time, according to Apple.