An American information security firm, Zerodium has announced big financial rewards for zero-day exploits. Now, it’s time that the security researchers and hackers can make some huge cash. If you can hack any of the messenger apps, you can grab an enormous $500000. This is one offer that you can’t say no to, if you somehow sweat your brow in the cyber, IT or networking industry.
The premium exploit seller wants you to hand out unknown vulnerabilities in Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, WeChat, Viber, iMessage alongside your SMS/MMS and email messaging.
Without you ever being any wiser, Zerodium wants to break through your device. It is only possible if you could find the flaws for local privilege escalation and remote code execution in these apps.
“ZERODIUM pays premium bounties and rewards to security researchers to acquire their original and previously unreported zero-day research affecting major operating systems, software, and devices. While the majority of existing bug bounty programs accept almost any kind of vulnerabilities and [proof of concepts] but pay very low rewards, at ZERODIUM we focus on high-risk vulnerabilities with fully functional exploits, and we pay the highest rewards on the market,” the company website reports.
You can read more about the rewarding challenge here.
The declaration presents equally likely effects in all mobile OS including Android and iOS. The payouts would differ on the basis of the vulnerability to be cracked.
And you must be wondering of jailbreaking iPhones. Recently, it has increased its safety measures. Nonetheless, if you could manage to find loopholes in an iPhone gizmo, you can make up to $1500000.
The Washington DC based company’s founder Chaouki Bekrar explained the essence of this hack. “The high value of zero-day exploits for such apps comes from both a high demand by customers and a small attack surface in these apps which makes the discovery and exploitation of critical bugs very challenging for security researchers.”
Zerodium has a mysterious client base here. Although it does not name them, again the website spills off some beans. “ZERODIUM customers are major corporations in defense, technology, and finance, in need of advanced zero-day protection, as well as government organizations in need of specific and tailored cybersecurity capabilities.”
This is an expensive luxury for anyone who is game for the challenge. Despite that, Zerodium would never want to attack your devices with this step.
You might be obviously using many of these apps. It might, however, sound troublesome to you pertaining to your privacy. Hold on for now. This hindrance can be avoided if you update your apps regularly. Opt for an officially assured firmware protection too to avoid falling prey to the attackers.
