Apple will pay you over ₹17 crore if you can find this bug in…

Apple encourages researchers to find bugs to help the company build a safer and more secure experience for its users.

Bug bounties are a major initiative by top tech brands like Apple, Google, and others to identify potential loopholes in their services that could be exploited and affect their customers. To address this, these brands offer large sums of money to researchers who can find such vulnerabilities so they can be patched.

Apple is paying big money to researchers. (Shaurya Sharma - HT)

By Shaurya Sharma

Shaurya Sharma is the Technology Editor at Hindustan Times Digital Streams, where he oversees technology coverage across digital and social platforms. With over eight years of experience across editorial, video production, and digital media, his work focuses on smartphones, AI, consumer gadgets, and shaping audience-first content strategies for modern tech consumers.

He began his career in 2018 as a fashion cinematographer before turning his lifelong passion for technology into a profession. From spending his childhood immersed in tech magazines, video games, and the latest gadgets to covering the global consumer tech industry today, technology has remained a constant throughout his journey.

Over the years, Shaurya has worked with some of India’s leading media organisations, including CNN-News18, Sportskeeda, and Guiding Tech, where he led video initiatives that combined strong editorial storytelling with engaging visual and social-first execution.

A graduate in Journalism and Mass Communication from Manipal University, Shaurya has reviewed hundreds of products across categories including smartphones, laptops, gaming consoles, cameras, and wearables. Beyond work, he is passionate about animal welfare, environmental causes, and automobiles, particularly turbo-petrol cars

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In its latest programme, Apple is offering as much as $2 million, or approximately ₹17.7 crore, for identifying "exploit chains that can achieve similar goals as sophisticated mercenary spyware attacks", also known as a zero-click hack. This represents the highest tier of the bounty.

Identify Dangerous Bugs, Win Big Money

Apple is also offering rewards for finding bugs in Lockdown Mode, focusing on issues that bypass its protections. For this, Apple offers a maximum payout of $2 million. The company also provides a maximum bounty of $1.5 million for beta software issues, including regressions, along with other categories that can be explored on its security site.

“​​This is an unprecedented amount in the industry and the largest payout offered by any bounty program we’re aware of — and our bonus system, providing additional rewards for Lockdown Mode bypasses and vulnerabilities discovered in beta software, can more than double this reward, with a maximum payout in excess of $5 million,” Apple said.

Apple has stated that updates to its bug bounty programme will take effect in November 2025. The company will publish a complete list of new and expanded categories, rewards, and bonuses on the Apple Security Research site, along with instructions.

Since launching the public Apple Security Bounty Program in 2022, Apple has paid $35 million, which is over ₹300 crore in rewards to over 800 security researchers, with multiple individuals earning as much as $5,00,000.

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