SoylentNews

An Anonymous Coward writes:

+techonomics

Zerodium is offering up to $1.5 million for an exploit [arstechnica.com] against iPhones and iPads running the latest version of iOS 10, or up to $200,000 for an exploit against Android 7:

Last year, Zerodium offered $1 million for iOS exploits [arstechnica.com], up to a total of $3 million. It dropped the price to $500,000 after receiving and paying for three qualifying submissions. On Thursday, Zerodium founder Chaouki Bekrar said the higher prices are a response to improvements the software makers—Apple and Google in particular—have devised that make their wares considerably harder to compromise.

"Prices are directly linked to the difficulty of making a full chain of exploits, and we know that iOS 10 and Android 7 are both much harder to exploit than their previous versions," he told Ars. Asked why a string of iOS exploits commanded 7.5 times the price of a comparable one for Android he said: "That means that iOS 10 chain exploits are either 7.5 x harder than Android or the demand for iOS exploits is 7.5 x higher. The reality is a mix of both."

Original Submission