Apple has substantially revamped its Apple Security Bounty program, raising top rewards, expanding categories, and introducing a new verification mechanism called Target Flags to speed and standardize payouts for high-impact exploit research. The changes — including a new $2 million top award (and potential bonuses pushing some payouts beyond $5 million) — are designed to encourage deep, real-world exploit research against Apple’s latest hardware and software.
Apple says it’s adapting the bounty to reflect how attackers operate today: mercenary spyware attacks often chain many vulnerabilities across different layers, and they can cost millions to develop. To push researchers toward digging for real-world, demonstrable exploit chains (rather than theoretical findings), Apple has rebalanced rewards to favor complete chains and verifiable outcomes. The company also highlights recent platform defenses such as Lockdown Mode and Memory Integrity Enforcement — improvements that make high-quality exploitation increasingly difficult and that, Apple argues, justify bigger incentives for the rare successful research that still materializes.
Apple previewed several specific increases that show the program’s new priorities:
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Zero-click remote chains: up to $2M (from $1M).
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One-click remote chains: up to $1M (from $250K).
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Wireless proximity attacks: up to $1M (from $250K).
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Gatekeeper full bypass (no user interaction): $100K — a new push to secure app-installation defenses on macOS.
Apple will also run special 2026 initiatives: donating a thousand iPhone 17 devices (with Memory Integrity Enforcement) to civil-society organizations that support at-risk users, and including iPhone 17 devices in the 2026 Security Research Device (SRD) program for qualified researchers. Apple says SRD applicants with proven track records can apply through October 31, 2025. These moves are framed as efforts to both accelerate high-quality research and help get Apple’s strongest protections into the hands of people who need them most.
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