Apple said to be meeting up with high profile hackers as part of its new bug bounty program

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Apple has reportedly reached out to a handful of high profile iPhone and Mac hackers to try and secure their operating systems from exploits that could be used maliciously or for jailbreaking.

The hackers are expected to meet at the Cupertino campus some time this month, where they can earn up to $200,000 for finding major exploits as part of Apple’s bug bounty program.

Not a lot is known about the event, as Apple requested the participants keep details about it under wraps.

According to a report by Forbes Wednesday morning, one anonymous source has stepped up with some details. Some of the high profile hackers who’ve been invited may include Luca Todesco, who recently demonstrated an iPhone 7 jailbreak, Stefan Esser, a well-known security researcher, and Nicholas Allegra aka comex, the creator of the popular JailbreakMe Safari-based jailbreak tool.

The list goes on, naming many others who are prominent in the jailbreak community that have supposedly been invited to participate in the event, such as ih8sn0w and even members from the Pangu jailbreak team, however a full participant list is not known at this point in time.

Apple’s ruse to invite these hackers is believed to have been a very selective process. Not just any hackers were invited by Apple to hack into these devices; only the best of the best have been hand-picked, likely to save on costs and to get the highest-quality exploits possible.

Should the hackers be successful in finding a bevy of powerful exploits as a part of this event, it may make devices like the iPhone significantly harder to jailbreak in the future, a problem the jailbreak community is already battling, as there have been an infrequent succession of jailbreak releases each year.

Of course, it’s ultimately going to be up to the hackers to participate or not, as various third party sources often pay several times more than what Apple’s offering for security holes in Apple’s devices.

Source: Forbes