Hacking Apple's iOS may not be easy, but for determined hackers who are vying for a million dollar reward, nothing is too impossible.
A security company, Zerodium, announced on Monday that it will pay a team of hackers a seven-figure amount who will be able to develop a technique that could hack any iPhone or iPad that can be tricked into browsing a crafted website. Zerodium coined the technique as jailbreak.
Founder Chaouki Bekrar and his company said that its customers include 'governments that would undoubtedly use such "zero-day" hacking tactics on unwitting surveillance targets.
Accordingly, Wired was told by Bekrar that two hacking teams have attempted to get the reward in its September and October deadline announcements.
However, only one team proved to develop a working iOS attack that would completely hack an iPhone or an iPad. The other team may have to settle with second place.
The rule to claim the reward is for the iPhone attack to "be achievable remotely, reliably, silently, and without requiring any user interaction except visiting a web page." Also, the browsers designated are only Google Chrome and Safari.
"Two teams have been actively working on the challenge but only one has made a full and remote jailbreak. The other team made a partial jailbreak and they may qualify for a partial bounty (unconfirmed at this time)," Bekrar writes, according to Wired.
The details will be divulged to Zerodium customers and clients that are "major corporations in defense, technology, and finance" and "government organizations in need of specific and tailored cybersecurity capabilities."
On the other hand, the company would keep still as to communicating with Apple, although it may 'later' tell the latter further details to help them combat the attacks.
Apple hasn't commented on the said Zero Day Attack topic yet.
Do you think the Zero Day Attack will be helpful to companies and governments? Or would it cause further damage to Apple's hard-to-break security?
