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The American technology company Apple has sharply increased the maximum reward in its Bug Bounty program. Now, the top payout for discovering significant software vulnerabilities has reached $2 million. Taking bonuses into account, a single researcher can earn up to $5 million in total.

Apple’s Vice President of Security Engineering, Ivan Krstić, told Wired that such a high reward aims to motivate highly qualified researchers. The company is ready to pay millions for the most complex issues—especially those vulnerabilities that could be exploited for spyware attacks.

Bonus rewards are granted for:

• Finding security issues during beta testing of new software.

• Discovering vulnerabilities that can bypass the Lockdown Mode, a feature that restricts most system functionalities to enhance security.

This initiative underscores how crucial software vulnerabilities are for Apple, a company renowned for the strong security of its mobile products.

Apple’s bug bounty program started in 2016 with a maximum reward of $200,000. In 2019, the top prize rose to $1 million, and now it has reached $2 million. Since 2020, when the program became open to everyone, Apple has paid out over $35 million to users who discovered vulnerabilities.

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Photo: unian.ua