• General
  • August 10, 2019
  • 3 minutes read

Apple Will Give Special Phones To Security Researchers

Apple CEO Tim Cook Photograph by Vivek Prakash/Fortune At this year’s Black Hat security conference, Ivan Krstic, a Croatian computer security…

Apple CEO Tim Cook

Photograph by Vivek Prakash/Fortune

At this year’s Black Hat security conference, Ivan Krstic, a Croatian computer security expert who serves as head of Security Engineering and Architecture at Apple, said the company would begin giving out special iPhones to cyber-security researchers to help them find possible flaws before malicious hackers do. Krstic made this known at the end of a 50-minute long presentation that talked about Apple’s security efforts for its hardware and software products.

In a statement to Bloomberg News, Krstic said the special iPhones will disable some security features and allow deeper access for researchers. The program under which Apple will give out the special phones is scheduled to begin next year.

Apple has also said it’s extending its “bug bounty” program to the Apple TV, Apple Watch, Mac, and iPad operating systems. The program, similar to several others run by large tech companies, doles out cash rewards to security researchers who find and report security mishaps in Apple’s software. In the past, Apple payed researchers who found flaws as much as $200,000, but has just increased the maximum payout to as high as $1 million. The $1 million bug bounty is geared towards researchers who discover more advanced security flaws.

Apple has also set a $500,000 reward for those who discover and report flaws that gives illegal access to user data.


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