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Article quote-ee here. You're not describing the same thing the people in the article were describing.

The bugs that Apple is looking for take time and resources to find yet you can't depend on the $200k of revenue to feed yourself. E.g., even after you spend months of real work you sometimes fail and get no payout. That's an acceptable risk for a $3k bug bounty. It's not at $200k.

Every other issue you cited is secondary to the economic one.

I am well aware of how finding these bugs work (I recommend looking at who I am, if you don't know, as your response kind of tells me you don't ;P). I believe the article is not actually focusing on the same problem as Apple's bug bounty program.

I know precisely who you are, and I think you're jumping to conclusions in this case. People love to read morals, ethics, and politics into analyzing bug bounty submissions, but none of that is the primary factor here.

In general, it's not possible to "stumble upon" a $200k bug like the kind Apple is looking for, you have to set out with the intention to find one and work for it. But you're not on a contract and you're not getting paid the whole time. You only get paid on delivery and there's a high chance you won't have anything to deliver. It's just too much risk for an individual or company to commit months of time at potentially $0/hour.

You alluded to it, and it bears mentioning that there is a balancing act with future revenue streams too. If you set up the process to find one $200k bug then presumably you want to use all that know-how to find a second one. But reporting the first one to Apple will, generally, kill your entire revenue stream as Apple knows all your secrets now.

In general, working on $200k bug bounties is a bad business proposition. Period.

We don't disagree on your conclusion: where we disagree is on the goal of these bug bounty programs and (thereby) how we can judge if they work. The value of a bug to the black market can be insanely high: it just isn't possible for Apple to outbid the negative ramifications a bug can have on the outside world. You are always going to get more money by going to the black market than by selling it to Apple.

So, I am going to say it again: I believe the article is not actually focusing on the same problem as Apple's bug bounty program. The issue you were quoted for in the article is "how do you get someone already doing this to give the bug to Apple instead of selling it at market rates". Well, if someone is willing to sell it at market rates, then Apple is kind of screwed as that person likely does not have much in the way of morals and Apple is never going to outbid the market rate.

Now, you are focused on a different issue: "how do you incentivize people who otherwise wouldn't work on this stuff at all to work on this stuff". This still isn't something Apple is focused on. If you want to do this but just need a steady salary, I bet Apple would love to hire you.

What a bug bounty program does is it makes the situation that does sometimes come up where you stumble across an issue while working on something else, or you just got really curious about a thing and find yourself two months later having "wasted your life" on scavenging a bug, or you have some other motivation (consulting or academic work) to be panning for gold, and now you don't know what to do next: rather than doing nothing, you give it to Apple for some reasonable payout.

If you were morally OK with selling your bug on the black market, Apple can't be going around trying to outbid evil, so that can't be a goal of this program and you can't judge it for not solving it.

And if you wouldn't have spent your time on this at all, and would have instead gone off to work on some other project, Apple isn't trying to replace "jobs": they have a massive security staff of some extremely talented people (many of whom at this point used to play for the other side).

> You are always going to get more money by going to the black market than by selling it to Apple. [...] , then Apple is kind of screwed as that person likely does not have much in the way of _morals_ [...] If you were morally OK with selling you really bug on the black market, Apple can't be going around trying to outbid _evil_,

(_emphasis_ was mine)

I agree with you that dguido has framed Apple's Bug Bounty program incorrectly. The money amounts are deliberately not structured as a incentive to build a remote "red team"[1] to do speculative work. (I would go farther to say it would be folly to attempt to create such a salaried red team to uncover security bugs since history has shown that many types of security exploits that come to light had leaps of creativity that exceeded the imaginations of the systems' designers.)

However, I'd add some nuance to your moral scenarios by stating that a sophisticated buyer of Apple bugs would not present it to the hackers as "selling to evil entities". Instead they're actually selling to the "good guys" -- it's just a different set of good guys from Apple. (E.g. Zerodium may in some instances act as a front to buy the bug on behalf of NSA/FBI/CIA).

The article talks about hackers that are willing to go to dinner with Apple and meet-&-greet Craig Federighi. Since these "security researchers" are willing to show their faces to Apple, we'd probably classify them as "white hat" or "grey hat" hackers instead of evil "black hat" hackers. Therefore, one way to persuade these researchers to sell the secret to the black market is to convince them they are still serving "the greater good"... it's just the black market group is paying $500k instead of Apple's $200k.

Summary of my interpretation of Apple's Bug Bounty:

1) Apple did not set it up to incentivize speculative work. This looks like an economic design flaw but but it actually isn't.

2) Apple is not trying to persuade immoral black hat hackers to sell to Apple. Apple already knows the amounts are too small to compete there. The audience they are trying to appeal to is the white/grey hats.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_team

Apple could easily set aside 50+ million per year on bug bounties. They don't do this for many reasons such as reputation hits etc, but cost is not the most important one.

>People love to read morals, ethics, and politics into analyzing bug bounty submissions, but none of that is the primary factor here.

Just disregarding these things and justify it with "economics" or "it's bad business" doesn't make ethics disappear. I'm guessing you wouldn't sell exploits to ISIS even if they were the highest bidder..? What about North Korea? China? Russia? Syria? The US? The US with Trump in charge?

I personally like tptacek's comment on this from last year:

>None of them are adequate compensation for the full-time work of someone who can find those kinds of bugs. Nor are they meant to be. If you can, for instance, find a bug that allows you to violate the integrity of the SEP, you have a market value as a consultant significantly higher than that $100k bug bounty --- which will become apparent pretty quickly after Apple publicly thanks you for submitting the bug, as they've promised to do.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12230677

> which will become apparent pretty quickly after Apple publicly thanks you for submitting the bug, as they've promised to do

This is the same twisted logic that people try to use to hire photographers or graphic designers to work for them for free, because they will get "exposure". If someone does something valuable for you, you should pay, no matter how famous your brand is. And Apple has enough cash to spare.

It's not though, since the alternative to disclosing the bug to apple is to either hoard it for yourself or sell it to someone, both of which keep the attack vector open and millions of users at risk. That's where the ethical discussion comes in, and there's not really a parallel to the case with the photographer/graphic artist.

(And just to be clear, I do think that fair compensation is a part of that ethics discussion, but it doesn't trump other concerns.)

(edit: typo)

I was not addressing the ethical question involved - just the logic behind "Apple thanks you, therefore you should be happy".

If Apple is not providing reasonable money compensation to white hat security researchers then they are willingly leaving this space opened for black hats.

I read that more as "Apple thanks you, at which point you realize you were smart enough to have made more money doing something else", not "therefore you should be happy".

This is similarly distorted though - You make enough money anyway, so you should do this for Apple on discount, because "exposure".

No, Apple is making money of their walled garden, they should be the ones to pay the bills for wall maintenance.

You are trying to read the comment as positive of Apple's thank you and exposure, when it sounded to me much more like a reality check: I would go so far as to say Thomas's point might have been "when Apple thanks you you will come to regret wasting your time--which you now know was always valuable--on them". That isn't "you should thank Apple for making you realize that"...

> hoard it for yourself or sell it to someone, both of which keep the attack vector open and millions of users at risk.

I think this logic is inherently flawed.

If there was no monetary incentive and the only ROI was a thanks from Apple, maybe the bug in question would not have been found in the first place. Becoming aware of a bug does not suddenly put people at any more risk than they were previously in, prior to bug discovery.

>Becoming aware of a bug does not suddenly put people at any more risk than they were previously in, prior to bug discovery.

I agree, which is why I said "keep[s] [...] millions of users at risk" not "puts millions of users at risk". An unfound bug is still a potential zero-day. With something as valuable as an iphone exploit, we know multiple entities are desperately looking for it, so I wouldn't err on the side of assuming that any exploit would not be found. (or put more succintly: If you've found it, someone else might've to)

What do you think the payouts should be?

There's a variety of models that others have experimented with, and they all tend to fail at bugs this deep. For instance, Google tried a thing where you open a bug ticket once you think you've found an issue and you stream out everything you tryalong the way. I think there were ongoing or partial rewards and it was Android-centric. I'm pretty sure approx. 0 people took them up on it.

Microsoft also had/has mitigation bounties for around the same dollar amounts and it turned out nearly the same: lower than expected interest given the price point. Most of the interested parties tend to be academics, for fairly obvious reasons when you think about the economics of it all.

I think that if Apple wants to find bugs this deep in specialized, hard-to-audit surfaces within iOS, they ought to hire experts at expert rates and provide them the tools they need to look. In my perfect world, I would hire an expert consulting firm at their market base rates and then offer bonuses for findings on top of it. I would make the engagement low intensity and long in length, to build competency and familiarity with the codebase over time.

> they ought to hire experts at expert rates and provide them the tools they need to look.

I'm really curious where this idea that the existence of a bug program means they must have no in-house bug hunting team. A competent, deep pocketed corporation (which I think we all agree Apple is) would certainly do both.

Want to hunt Apple bugs but not work for them? Do that. Want to hunt bugs with a steady salary? Do that.

Edit: now with link to 197 job postings! https://jobs.apple.com/us/search#&ss=Sr.%20Security%20Engine...

> I think that if Apple wants to find bugs this deep in specialized, hard-to-audit surfaces within iOS, they ought to hire experts at expert rates and provide them the tools they need to look.

...Apple does this. The people I complain about and call "mercenaries" are the people from the grey hat hacking community who decide to go work for Apple. If I wanted to go work for Apple on this I could probably get myself hired there in a matter of days, if it weren't for the issue that I am morally opposed to it (and they know that at this point, so they would rightfully be highly skeptical of me finally "coming around" ;P). The bug bounty program is not focusing on this issue.

You are saying that you do not agree with security experts helping Apple secure iOS? Or am I misunderstanding? (Pretty surprised to hear this).

When you work to help Apple lock down their operating system, you are helping an oligopoly (Apple along with Google and Microsoft) to control the future of all software development. The mitigations that are put into the operating system serve two purposes: sure, they lock out invaders... but they also lock out the user and rightful owner of the hardware.

The moral costs of the latter do not pay for the benefits of the former. I look at people who work for Apple on security as similar to people who work for the TSA: yes, they are probably in some way contributing to the safety of people... but they are actively eroding the liberties of people in such a frightful way that the benefits are not worth the cost.

So when I see people working for either the TSA or for Apple, I ask myself "did they really really need this job? or could they have gotten work elsewhere"; and if the answer is that they didn't absolutely need to work for Apple, I model them as someone who has left the Resistance to go work for the Empire because they thought laser guns were cool and the Empire happened to have a larger laser gun for them to work on, and hell: the Empire is managing to maintain order on a large number of planets, right? :/

In case you think that this is just some future concern, it is a war which is already playing out today in countries like China, where the government knows that Apple has centralized control of what can be distributed on that platform and uses that knowledge to lean on Apple with threats of firewalls and import bans to get software and books they dislike redacted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/business/media/new-york-t...

> Apple, complying with what it said was a request from Chinese authorities, removed news apps created by The New York Times from its app store in China late last month.

> The move limits access to one of the few remaining channels for readers in mainland China to read The Times without resorting to special software. The government began blocking The Times’s websites in 2012, after a series of articles on the wealth amassed by the family of Wen Jiabao, who was then prime minister, but it had struggled in recent months to prevent readers from using the Chinese-language app.

Having a centralized point of control at Apple is not helping the lives of these Chinese citizens, at least according to the morals that I have (and I would have guessed you have, but maybe you are more apologetic to these regimes than I; we have never really spent that much time talking as opposed to just kind of "sitting next to each other" ;P).

So, yes: I absolutely am against security experts "helping Apple secure iOS" when what we know is actually happening is that they are "helping Apple enforce censorship by regimes such as the Chinese government on their citizens". There are tons of places in the world you can go work for where your work on security will actually be used for good: go work for one of those companies, not the oligopoly.

Thank you. This sounds like is a viewpoint I strongly disagree with, as I believe potential misuse of vulnerabilities is a concern which outweighs device freedom in this context (example: https://citizenlab.ca/2017/07/mexico-disappearances-nso/), but nonetheless I really appreciate the detailed explanation.

FWIW, I don't disagree with you that the security issues here are real. My issue is that Apple has managed to tie together the security of the user with the maintenance of their centralized control structure on computation. I think that people should lean on Apple to provide a device which is both open and secure. Part of this is what amounts to a bunch of people refusing to work for their company, particularly on the parts of their products which are essentially weapons (so the same argument about refusing to work for governments). Hell: even if they didn't seem to go out of their way to be actively evil about some of this stuff, it would be better :(.

I mean, here's a really simple one: they already have "free developer" account profiles. However, you can't install an app that uses the VPN API using a free developer profile. So if I build a VPN service with a protocol designed to be used by people in China to help people bypass the Great Firewall, as VPN services are illegal in China, China has complete control over Apple's app distribution, and Apple not only polices the use of their enterprise certificates but has in the last year or so started playing whack-a-mole on services which use shared paid developer certificates, users in China are not going to be able to install it on their iOS devices.

Why did Apple go out of their way to block access to the VPN API from free developer accounts? I can't come up with any reasons for this that make me feel warm and fuzzy :/. So yes: the US military does a lot of good protecting people on foreign soil, as does the FBI here at home, and I'll even grant that the TSA probably does something good ;P. You can show me a ton of reports of active terrorism in the world, and say "look, this stuff is important, peoples' lives are on the line"... but as long as working for those groups is tied to mass surveillance, installing puppet regimes, and maintaining resource imbalances, the moral issues remain :(.

(I'm also going to note that I find it a lot less weird if someone is consistent and always worked for Apple, whether directly as an employee or indirectly by handing them information and bugs than if they "switch sides" and go from simultaneous disclosure to "responsible" disclosure or even forced disclosure by being an employee. That's why this thread was spawned from me noting that I have at times used the term "mercenary". It makes some sense to me that there are people who work for the Empire because they believe in the goals of the Empire; it just irks me, though, that there are people who once worked for the Resistance who get a job offer from the Empire and are like "wow, that sounds great!" and go work for them without seemingly believing that anything has changed about what they are fighting for... it tells me that, at the end of the day, they really just thought "working with lasers is fun!" and the moral issues of which side they were on never mattered.)

I get where you are coming from. It is worth keeping in mind that not as many folks see it in a political manner, so if their viewpoint is a choice between "working hard to release free research/tools and getting people angry/complaining in response" versus "working hard and getting a decent salary to do what they love" then it makes some sense as to why people would go that direction.

I'm in agreement with you regarding Developer ID. I have no idea why Apple would want to limit that, I know they recently relaxed restrictions on NetworkExtension though (except for Wi-Fi helpers) - Are you referring to the old "e-mail here to apply for the entitlement" process they had in place? Or do they still not allow the entitlement for free developer IDs now?

> Are you referring to the old "e-mail here to apply for the entitlement" process they had in place? Or do they still not allow the entitlement for free developer IDs now?

I really do mean the latter: they still block this entitlement from use by free developer IDs. If you try to activate it you get an error #9999 with the following message.

> The 'Network Extensions' feature is only available to users enrolled in Apple Developer Program. Please visit https://developer.apple.com/programs/ to enroll.

It seems to me the actual solution is to hire experts as employees. That solves the "can't put food on the table" problem. It's probably a lot more efficient and effective use of their cash. As far as I know Apple has already done this over the years.

They absolutely do and have continued to do so vigorously. The bug bounty program is in addition to this.

Doesn't a high bounty create a perverse incentive for employees to introduce or leave bugs they spot so that they/some accomplice can claim the bounty?

I know silicon valley employees' honnesty is above all suspicions and rogue employees is a monopoly of the financial industry but one has to consider the risk.

Do you believe this is possible? Introducing or leaving such bugs would need more than one person, probably from different departments and even if it gets past through code-review, there is still a risk someone notices the connection between the one who introduced the bug and the one who found it.

The thing is it often only takes one line of code running with the right privilege to make the whole system insecure. And a dishonest employee wouldn't even need to write it. Having access to source code, all it would take is to spot it but not fix it.

Developers unimpeachable morals aside, I think the risk of getting caught would outweigh the benefit. Most developers at Apple hardly need a secondary sort of income.

Is everyone in this thread being sarcastic about developers morals? No one here really thinks that developers have as a whole are more moral than any random subset of people, right?

> Most developers at Apple hardly need a secondary sort of income.

I would have said the same of bankers and management consultants but the fact is things like insider dealing is a thing.

In this case, the reward doesn't outweigh the risk.

Insider trading can earn very large amounts of money, and the higher your current position, the larger scale of insider trading becomes available.

Now, for Apple iOS core developers - does it make sense to risk a $200k/year job and possible jailtime to get a $50k bounty (the limit for kernel exploits) that you'd have to share with whoever helps you to launder it?

No, it doesn't... but the context of this subthread was "Apple should pay a lot more for this bounty" which turned into "but if they do that then it will create a perverse incentive to do this evil thing". The people you are arguing against thereby agree with you: $50k is not enough of an incentive; but they feel that at some point as that number gets higher the incentive will make sense.

Yeah, okay, with a factor of 10 increase, that would start to make sense, and there could certainly be people willing to go for it.

Many high profile bugs seem to have plausible deniability where they can reasonably be errors but might have been deliberately inserted. Anybody can make mistakes similar to Heartbleed, especially if they want to.

Logicians on HN: Is there a special name for Appeal to Authority when applied to oneself?

It would still be an appeal to authority. However an appeal to authority, while sometimes fallacious, is not always fallacious.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority#Valid_...

I don't think you know what "appeal to authority" means ;P.

Enlighten me.

You know, I didn't think I wanted to dignify this with this level of response, but maybe someone else is going to get confused and I have terrible insomnia: you responded to someone (me) telling someone else "the information you think is relevant to changing my mind is information you should know I already have, which means there is some framing problem in our conversation that needs to be addressed" with a (slightly indirect, and thereby to me incredibly snippy sounding and extra insulting) comment claiming that is an "appeal to authority", when that statement wasn't even an argument and so wasn't an "appeal": you can't read that comment from me as "I am right because of who I am", as it is simply "you are trying to convince me of your point using information I do not disagree with (and which you should know I have, and so should probably know I don't disagree with...)" and was nothing more than a lead-in to my actual point, which was "given that I know that and that we don't even disagree there, you should go back and notice the following thing about what I said: we are talking about different points", which was the actual statement in that comment: I believe the article is not actually focusing on the same problem as Apple's bug bounty program.

You framed the problem as a moral one. dguido framed it as an economic one.

You responded to his rebuttal with "I know how these things work, don't you know who I am?" reiterate position without adding any further points or addressing the opposing party's points

How is that not an appeal to authority?

I don't know who you are (and maybe that's why I'm the only one calling you out). If you are as influential in this space as you appear to be, it's important to take the initiative to present strong arguments rather than rely on your name.

Sorry to hear about the insomnia - I'm in the same boat. Hope it gets better.

So that's the real ethical question involved here

as without at least one bug, you don't even own your own phone enough to look for others

Indeed, the fact that these bugs can lead to freedom, in the form of jailbreaking, certainly complicates the decision.

The physical analogy doesn't help either; I mean if you were somehow kidnapped and physically kept hostage in a "walled garden", would you tell those watching over you that you found a way out, if they told you that telling them would result in some reward --- but that you'd remain inside?

I have, a handful of times, discovered exploits that would break some DRM or allow myself more freedom (e.g. bypassing a registration-wall on a website or other software, found detailed intended-to-be-confidential service and design information for equipment I own, etc.) In all those cases I never considered notifying the author(s) about it. Granted, this was a time when bug bounties were nearly nonexistent, but now that I think about it, even if I was offered some other reward, I wouldn't.

But... your analogy is even worse, I think. Apple doesn't "kidnap" people. You willingly opt-in to the "walled garden" ecosystem. It isn't forced on you in any way at all.

It's more like contracting a security firm to keep your stuff safe. They promise they'll do their best, and in exchange you give them some money and acknowledge that they don't have to explain to you how it works. If you find a flaw in their security system, you can either (a) sell it to somebody, thus compromising all of the firm's clients (including yourself), (b) report it to the company so they can fix it, or (c) keep it secret for some reason. I would always choose (b). I find (c) to be in poor taste, but not appalling by any means. (a) is, in my opinion, never an acceptable option.

> which, given the demand from legitimate users due to Apple's insistence on locking down their devices for reasons that are more about business models than security

Well.. except that's not really true. iOS is de facto the most secure consumer OS out there, precisely because it doesn't allow arbitrary code to be run, and because of the restrictions placed on the process of getting software onto them. The value Apple gets from users not worrying about viruses, malware, or other security threats far exceeds the piddling revenue from the App Store, because that peace of mind and brand reputation drives device sales where that value is captured.

Meanwhile, the more permissive consumer OS' of Windows and Android seem to have continued issues with security, and the average - even informed - consumer never really knows what the software on them is really doing.

I don't disagree with the rest of your comment though!

The issues with Android are not due to the token ways in which it is slightly more permissive for users (while on the whole still being extremely locked down...); they are due to the ecosystem of manufacturers and how devices end up being deployed. Also, the reality is that for the first over well-over five years of iOS existing, it was de facto open: jailbreaks were commonly available and easy to use; the idea that the very existence of an ability to control your own device can thereby be shown by simple demonstration to not be a serious concern. And to be very very clear: of course the issue is not "the piddling revenue" (they break even on the App Store at best)... the business reasons are that they want a strong DRM story in order to be able to pitch content producers and developers on why their platform should get to deploy and vend their media.

> The issues with Android are not due to the token ways in which it is slightly more permissive for users (while on the whole still being extremely locked down...); they are due to the ecosystem of manufacturers and how devices end up being deployed

I meant something slightly different wrt 'permissive', namely that the overall market execution of Android is very permissive. To users buying the product, the specific reasons why Android is less secure don't matter. The only thing that matters is that they cannot fully trust software on the device or acquired though stores. Whether its the vendors that don't update the OS or the telecom company that installs crapware or the poorly policed third-party app store, malware has ample ways to get on the average Android device, due to the permissiveness of the full chain of processes and people involved in how it is deployed and managed.

> the reality is that for the first over well-over five years of iOS existing, it was de facto open: jailbreaks were commonly available and easy to use

Agree. The first few years were a whirlwind of rapid evolution and Apple had its hands full, and Apple just wasn't developer-focused. Jailbreaks were likely tolerated because developers were hungry to try things and Apple knew the libraries on iOS weren't that great at the time. Plus, jailbreak developers were like an outsourced R&D group for Apple to pluck ideas from. However, as iOS matured, and our culture rapidly adapted to smartphones, people began trusting them with more and more personal information. The cost of not addressing security became higher and higher. Developer tools and libraries also matured in this time, so overall the negatives of jailbreaks (security) began to far outweigh the positives.

> the idea that the very existence of an ability to control your own device can thereby be shown by simple demonstration to not be a serious concern.

Concerns for security exist on a spectrum (and are weighed against other concerns in development), and concerns can change as the world changes and the product evolves.

> the business reasons are that they want a strong DRM story in order to be able to pitch content producers and developers on why their platform should get to deploy and vend their media

I've never once heard the argument that DRM is the reason iOS is locked down. It also doesn't follow given that Macs are not locked down and can get the very same media, as can other platforms.

Given Apple has consistently focused on making computers for regular people for over four decades, I think it's pretty obvious the reason iOS is locked down is simply because there's an enormous amount of bullshit that comes with having users download software from unknown sources, and that a tightly controlled platform provides a much better user experience for regular users. Any other benefits are incidental.

EDIT: After re-reading your comments, I think we're disagreeing in whether locked down = more secure. In the case of iOS, I think it was a conscious decision made to create a better user experience, and an important subset of user experience is security. As you point out with the history of jailbreaks on iOS, you're saying Apple's permissiveness then suggests they don't have that security concern and they want to lock it down for other reasons (correct me if I'm wrong in characterizing your argument). I disagree and think security was one of many concerns being balanced at the time. Also I believe the types of vulnerabilities used by jailbreaks were probably not the types typical users would encounter in daily use of a device, such as browsing the web or downloading apps from the app store. Correct me if I'm wrong on that.

> Jailbreaks were likely tolerated because developers were hungry to try things and Apple knew the libraries on iOS weren't that great at the time.

> As you point out with the history of jailbreaks on iOS, you're saying Apple's permissiveness then suggests they don't have that security concern and they want to lock it down for other reasons (correct me if I'm wrong in characterizing your argument).

No: you completely misunderstand. I am not saying Apple let jailbreaking happen; I am saying Apple's device was so poorly secured (in an absolute, not relative, sense), that in practice you can model the device as being "open to anyone who wants to make their own device open". It was more open than Android for long periods of time as the jailbreaks were more consistent in their ability to give you full control of the device (Android jailbreaks tend to be "hit or miss", really).

The argument then becomes simple: if iOS is a platform you consider secure ("iOS is de facto the most secure consumer OS out there"), in practice this is a device which anyone who wanted to could get complete control over their own device, and so we know that property is unrelated to security.

The only thing it really does is make the device look better from a DRM perspective (particularly the AppleTV). I run into tons of developers constantly who are obsessed about piracy well past the point where it makes sense, and most of them have this weird mental model of Apple's security features that make them think weird stuff like "if I embed a key in my compiled binary no one can read it".

Regardless, I am just going to say it, as me having this information and trying to avoid saying it is probably just causing more problems than it benefits anyone: I have been challenged multiple times by people working at Apple (years ago, and I don't even think these people still work there, which makes me feel at least slightly more comfortable saying this) that if I want them to have a more open device in the ways that I want, I need to tell them how to do it without opening the flood door for piracy.

The argument to me reads as "if the security isn't perfect, it means they are not even trying, which makes it obvious that security is not the goal." but the not-perfect->not-trying jump doesn't seem to be fair.

I don't think goals or intents matter. Apple's goal might be to prevent the Ancient God Mulk'nar from returning to our dimension to begin the second stage of The Reckoning, and commenters might point out "Mulk'nar hasn't showed up yet, so this must be working"; but if either Apple or the commenters seriously think that having a closed device is what is preventing Mulk'nar from returning, they are clearly deceiving themselves as in practice the device has been de facto open (by ludicrous means that should not be required) for many years. The argument here is essentially "you are asking Apple to give up the only thing preventing Mulk'nar from returning" and I am showing how that makes no sense given the reality of history. People are saying the iPhone is very secure. The iPhone is, factually, a device which for many years was one of the more open platforms for people to tinker with their own device, due to the jailbreak scene. So the idea that allowing even all people, much less just security researchers, to tinker with their own device somehow would undo the security of the system doesn't make sense.

I think it's important to remember that Apple has a history of leaning to the decision which is most financially beneficial to Apple, wrt opening up the flood door to piracy. See iTunes/iPods policy changes over it's lifetime.

Interesting paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2244111

The article I read said Apple had iPhones that are easy to hack ? Can you explain what it means ? Quote “for special iPhones that don't have certain restrictions so it's easier to hack them, according to multiple people who attended the meeting.”

Wasn't there one jailbreak that worked through just Safari? Or am I remembering wrong?

Correct. One via TIFF exploit, then later via PDF exploit.

Yep, I believe that was the very first one.

I believe you're referring to JailbreakMe. Yes, it was Safari-based, but no, it wasn't the first jailbreak.

except cases like this: https://medium.com/@johnnylin/how-to-make-80-000-per-month-o... show that it's just a security theater for users rather than an actual working protection for users.

User lock-in is all that Apple really cares about - the entire app approving dance just adds a nice toolset to find arbitrary reasons for blocking apps that might be interfering with Apple interests (https://www.recode.net/2016/6/30/12067578/spotify-apple-app-...).

This is scammy and awful developer behavior, but probably best to keep in mind there was no overtly malicious content actually in the app regarding security, instead preying on user ignorance.

FYI: You're not wrong on this, I have found multiple apps which try to grab sensitive info and phone home with it, only pointing out your link may not be the best example to use.

I want option C. A more cohesive research organization that aims to keep iOS open as long as Apple wants to keep it closed. Right now such an organization is basically spread across a history of individual contributors, such as yourself, and others, like Luca, Comex, Geohot, and dozens of others that come and go (many do end up at Apple). We already know iOS bugs are getting more valuable because the span between jailbreaks is high and Apple's response is much, much faster now. As always with technologists, if you can compensate someone fairly and let them keep doing work they love in an environment with no, or at least few, moral problems, they will gladly take that option over a higher paying, but shady, option. Apple currently wins that battle easily.

FWIW, p0sixninja wanted to create such a thing; it has a lot of complexity, it isn't clear how to fund such a thing, and I will argue that, in the end, it isn't about raw research: while it is very difficult to make software without bugs, it isn't impossible and only a small amount of code really needs to be part of the attack surface. Eventually there just won't be any bugs, even if it takes another ten years. The idea of relying on failure to maintain open platforms is a short term solution: we need legislation.

You are right. It is at best a stop gap, and with a lot of complexity. I think as technologists it is easy to reach for the obvious technological solution. Forming a lobbying group with a mandate is very alien to me, but I know some sort of political and legal course is going to matter the most in the long run. It is one of the reasons we (my company) donates to EFF :)

> while I have met a few people in the field who are more than happy to sell a bug to literally anyone with cash, the vast majority of people (even the ones whom I have sometimes called "mercenaries" for being willing to "switch sides"), have a pretty serious distaste for the idea of selling a bug to the highest bidder.

How many people would openly admit to being willing to sell bugs to the highest bidder? I certainly wouldn't.

If anything, selling on the black market guarantees that you get what you think is a fair deal. You demo, you reach an agreement, you get your money (or bitcoins or whatever), and you move on. When disclosing a bug to a company, you have no idea how much payout you're going to get, if any.

Even if you don't "openly admit" that, do your friends know? How about the people you work with? Would they guess based on other stuff they see you do? I am not saying "I took a poll" or "I asked people", I am saying "over the past decade of being surrounded by people in the field of security, and having gotten to know a number of these people very well, this is the reality of the involved ethics".

You're neglecting the effort needed to find the keys. Suppose you spend all day every day checking every car for miles around searching for keys left in them. That's your occupation.

Either:

A) You're already a criminal doing it for the money or

B) You're just trying to help people and not doing it for the money.

Person B probably doesn't exist. So you're probably already A, a criminal and you don't care if people think you're immoral.

> Person B probably doesn't exist

I don't? Weird. There are lots of motivations for hunting bugs, many more powerful than money to people who have money already.

Or, C) You love the challenge of opening locks, and spend some of your time doing that.

There is also a possibility to stumble upon a bug accidently.

The analogy is misused. You compare to give information that does not cost anything in time and works, while chasing bugs is anything but free hobbies (for some maybe but this should not be the case at the professional level).

Bug bounty are: "do your job almost free and be paid sometimes"

In reality, people actually do stumble across many pretty bad bugs; for the ones that require "panning for gold", in addition to noting that there are tons of reasons why people might have been wandering past cars looking for keys (some good, some bad ;P)--including "academics"--I agree that this bug bounty program is not trying to solve that problem. There is too much attention here on the $200k tier instead of on the lower tiers.

I don't see the problem here. If the payment is not good enough then don't search for bugs and do domething else.

> So that's the real ethical question involved here: do you go to Apple (...) or do you sell your bug to a group that resells it to some government which then uses it to try to spy on people (...)

Can't you do both? (First sell to the evil group, and a little later to Apple).

Well, the group paying the big bucks will get extremely mad at you for doing that... the value of the bug to them was that the bug worked.

You can disclose to Apple anonymously. In your defense, bugs can be found independently by different people.

A mitigation usually used for this is to split up payments into installments, ceasing if the bug is fixed. Not perfect of course, but generally deemed acceptable.

> So that's the real ethical question involved here: do you go to Apple and get your $50-200,000, knowing that Apple will give you credit for the bug, let you talk about it at the next conference, and seems to care enough to try to fix these things quickly...

> ...or do you sell your bug to a group that resells it to some government which then uses it to try to spy on people like Ahmed Mansoor, "an internationally recognized human rights defender, based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and recipient of the Martin Ennals Award (sometimes referred to as a “Nobel Prize for human rights”)".

Selling the bug to Apple or some black hat group is rather a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. If you sell it to some exploit vendor, it will have the ugly consequences that you outlined. On the other hand if you use Apple's bug bounty program, Apple will use this information to lock the golden cage even tighter on its users - a consequence that I would also strongly avoid.

So I can understand that if it is a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, you will sell it to the best-paying buyer. On the other hand, if I could be sure that Apple will never ever not use the provided information to lock the golden cage on its users, I would accept your reasoning. As it stands now, I won't.