Who wants to be a hacking millionaire? For most technically competent folk starting on a cybersecurity career path the pull of a million-dollar hacking payday is tempered by the threat of a lengthy spell in jail should they get caught.
Or at least it is if your idea of a hacker is someone who breaks into stuff illegally. I call those people criminals, threat actors and, to be honest, pretty dumb. After all, there’s plenty of money to be made uncovering vulnerabilities and generally making the data-driven world we live in a little bit safer, all without breaking the law.
Apple has offered $1 million (£820,000) to anyone who can hack the iOS kernel of an iPhone without requiring any clicks by the user. Exploit acquisition platform Zerodium, meanwhile, is offering $2 million (£1.6 million) for anyone who can pull of a “zero-click” remote jailbreak of an iPhone. In the meantime, six hackers on the HackerOne bug bounty platform have now made more than $1 million each.
Here’s how they did it.
