A challenge has been issued to Apple by Zerodium in the wake of malware laced apps found in the app store to expose vulnerabilities in their iOS operating system.
Zerodium posted a challenge to iOS enthusiasts and software modders alike with a reward for successfully hacking Apple’s latest iOS release, iOS 9.
According to Fortune, the challenge came from the company founded by Chaouki Bekrar who is known as a zero-day exploit merchant. Essentially, it means he sells computer code that attacks previously unknown security exploits in programs.
Touted as being the most secure mobile operating system launched on the startup’s website, Zerodium stated in a blog post:
“Apple iOS, like all operating system, is often affected by critical security vulnerabilities, however due to the increasing number of security improvements and the effectiveness of exploit mitigations in place, Apple’s iOS is currently the most secure mobile OS,”
The post goes on to state, “But don’t be fooled, secure does not mean unbreakable, it just means that iOS has currently the highest cost and complexity of vulnerability exploitation and here’s where the Million Dollar iOS 9 Bug Bounty comes into play.”
With big news recently of around 50 or more apps affected by malware, primarily affecting iOS apps that most often are used by China and the Asia-Pacific region, this challenge looks to open the gates for more publicly known exploits to rise to the forefront.
Whether or not this has been done as a PR stunt is unknown at this time but what we do know is that submissions for the exploit are due to the company by Halloween, October 31st, 6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.
Apple has yet to comment about the challenge.
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