Itching to hack into Apple (ticker: AAPL) products and in need of some cash? Then Apple’s latest move could be your lucky day.
The tech giant will now be one of many companies offering monetary rewards for finding security vulnerabilities, like AT&T (T), Facebook (FB), Tesla Motors (TSLA) and more, reports Reuters. Apple will award as much as $200,000 for finding bugs in its “secure boot” firmware.
There is a slight catch to the potential cash influx: A special group of invited researchers will have the first chance to find specific security bugs. These experts have detected bugs for Apple before, but the company says it has not previously paid them for doing so.
Apple says other companies — which it did not name — counseled it on this decision. These other companies told Apple that if they could start over this kind of program, they would limit participants and eventually let others join.
“Fully open programs can definitely take a lot of resources to manage,” security analyst Rich Mogull tells Reuters.
Facebook’s open program gives an average $1,780, as of 2015. It has shelled out $4 million in the last five years, including giving a 10-year-old in Finland $10,000. He discovered how to delete Instagram user comments on accounts. Instagram will soon start letting users to filter comments on their posts or shut them off completely.
As for Apple, investors will be paying attention to its expected iPhone 7 release this fall. This latest move likely won’t draw much stock fluctuations either way. AAPL has remained relatively unchanged on the year, though its stock did rise 6.5 percent following its strong earnings report last week.
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Apple (AAPL) Will Pay You to Hack Its System originally appeared on usnews.com
