iOS 9 Jailbreak Hackers Won $1 Million For Exploit; iPhone's OS Prone To Bugs?

by Krezna de los Reyes / Nov 05, 2015 07:02 AM EST

A group of white hat hackers was rewarded of $1 million dollars by Zerodium for their success to jailbreak the latest iOS 9, according to IGN.

Zerodium is a global community of independent security researches specializes in cybersecurity announced the program on Sept. 21 called "The Million Dollar iOS 9 Bug Bounty" in the challenge of remotely hacking into the Apple's latest iOS and look for vulnerabilities, according to Zerodium's official website.

The winning team joined the challenge on Oct. 31, which is the deadline of the program. Zerodium's rule of the program is to have challengers remotely hack into the Apple's iOS 9 in iPhones or iPads using different ways to detect any bugs with use of Safari or Google Chrome browser or an SMS/MMS.

"Making the jailbreak remotely triggerable via Safari or Chrome requires at least two to three additional exploits compared to a local jailbreak," according to Zerodium's statement in Motherboard reported in Tech Times.

Zerodium kept the millionaire hackers identities private and the methods of the exploit in detecting the bugs from the system to ensure the safety of the software. The company is careful not to reveal anything about the process to avoid having it end up to the wrong hands and might become a security risk, according to Tech Times.

"This challenge is one of the best advertisement for Apple as it has confirmed once again that iOS security is real and not just about marketing," Bekrar said in Motherboard. "No software other than iOS really deserves such a high bug bounty," he added.

Last month, Apple made a statement to a judge from Brooklyn, New York who asked their insight in accessing the seized iPhone's data with accordance of US Justice Department request, but Apple made clear that it is impossible to do the process to a locked iPhone because of the updated OS, according to Daily Mail.

Zerodium planned to reward the successful team of jailbreak developers and independent security researchers that will achieve the task given with an amount of $3 million. A team or an individual can only get away with the amount of $1 million dollars, according to Tech Times.