Is Apple’s reluctance to implement a bug bounty program a security risk?
While many Silicon Valley tech companies famously employ ‘bug bounty’ programs whereby individuals or third-party groups can receive substantial monetary rewards for finding critical software bugs, Apple is curiously the odd man out. Whether it’s Google handing out $12,000 to a former employee who managed to purchase the Google.com domain name or Facebook paying $15,000 to a security researcher who happened upon a way to unlock any user’s account, paying cold hard cash to learn about previously undetected security vulnerabilities is not only commonplace, but also makes a lot of sense.
With this in mind, The New York Times recently posed an interesting question. Given that the FBI has enlisted the help of Cellebrite to access Syed Farook’s locked iPhone, is it possible that the company might have gone to Apple directly if it had a bug bounty program in place?
