Safety researchers play an important function in software program improvement, figuring out and discovering vulnerabilities. It’s so necessary that Apple Safety Analysis runs a Safety Bounty Program that gives payouts to researchers for his or her discoveries. Relying on the severity of the vulnerability, a researcher could make as a lot as $2 million for recognizing a bug, however, as one researcher exhibits, Apple’s notion of severity doesn’t at all times make sense.
A researcher who goes by RenwaX23 on X posted concerning the bounty obtained for what appears to be a essential safety gap. Present in Safari, the opening is a Common Cross-Website Scripting (UXSS) vulnerability, a sort the place an attacker can impersonate a person and entry their knowledge. On this occasion, RenwaX23 demonstrated that the opening can be utilized to entry iCloud and the iOS Digital camera app. The vulnerability was graded as Essential with a rating of 9.8 (on a scale of 10), so it wasn’t a small bug.
Recorded as CVE-2025-30466, Apple fastened it in Safari 18.4, which was launched with iOS/iPadOS 18.4 and macOS 15.4 replace again in March. RenwaX23 obtained a charge for the bug discovery–a measly $1,000.
Why the low payout? Some who responded to RenwaX23’s submit consider it’s as a result of Apple does take into account the benefit with which a person may encounter the vulnerability. On this case, “an excessive amount of person interplay is required,” as gergely_kalman places it, to set off the exploit. Apple’s web site states that required person interplay is a part of the standards for figuring out bounties, together with the variety of affected customers, degree of entry, how properly the report is written (which impacts how a lot work Apple must do), and different components.
Apple’s web site additionally supplies kinds of vulnerabilities, pay scales, and examples, however as one other poster on the thread, Taiko_soup, factors out, Apple’s selections appear arbitrary. Taiko_soup found a vulnerability that appeared to have a $50,000 payout, however was supplied $5,000.
Safety researchers put in a number of lengthy hours to seek out holes and report them in order that customers can have safer software program. There appears to be a scarcity of perspective on Apple’s half to compensate researchers appropriately for the work they do. It doesn’t look good when an organization as giant as Apple lowballs its payouts.
When Apple releases OS updates, such because the latest macOS Sequoia 15.6 replace, they embrace a number of safety fixes, as detailed on the Apple Safety Releases web site. On that web site, Apple lists the issues that have been addressed, and in the event you take a look at every particular entry, you’ll see one thing known as a CVE quantity (which refers back to the document stored within the Frequent Vulnerabilities and Exposures database) and the identify of an individual or group. That identify is a researcher who found the vulnerability.
