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blakesterz

It's always interesting to read about these things. It's amazing to me how hard it is to find a bug like this.

Also interesting, zerodium would pay up to $2million for something like this, and even more now on Android.

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It'd be capped at $1.5 million [1] since he didn't get persistence, but still very impressive.

[1]: https://zerodium.com/program.html

> [1]: https://zerodium.com/program.html

warning, scrolljacking... Firefox should really fix that bug, like they did with the "new" popups.

I have never seen one instance where it was beneficial to the user... some of these programmers (minority) really think that they know better

If you use NoScript the site is perfectly viewable and has no scrolljacking.

What's the business model of zerodium? Do they sell them on black market somehow? Why is it able to pay $2M if they weren't going to be able to extort more bounty from Apple (which at that point the security researcher herself can go to Apple, as well?)

This is the first I’ve heard of them but they seem to be based in DC and have government clients. I’m guessing they are funded by the US government to acquire vulnerabilities to use against targets as well as defend from being sold to other countries first.

That sounds grossly unethical. While the US somehow defends itself from being sold to other countries first (which it still might be), it probably also acquires them to attack/spy on its own citizens as there's been precedents about this, and no indication of policy change to stop it.

> it probably also acquires them to attack/spy on its own citizens

Or possibly, "to spy on foreign nationals and to share with FVEY partners - who'll do the spying on US citizens, because doing it themselves would be illegal"... :sigh:

Asking other countries spy on US citizens is also illegal. You are spreading a rumor that has no basis in fact.

What do you think the CIA and CyberCom do for a living?

Buying vulns/exploits is just a little government outsourcing.

Ethically, comparing to the CIA is about lowest bar possible.

They do entertaining things as long as you are comfortably more than ten feet from the end where freedom is expelled at supersonic speeds though, like, from buying Titanium sheets from communists to build the fastest airplanes to spy communists, to letting own psycos spike unsuspecting grad school elites to experimentally manufacture terrorists

Commercial vulnerability brokers don't pay out up front; they pay in monthly tranches, and stop paying when the vulnerability stops working. It's not an apples-apples comparison with bounty payouts.

What's the incentive to go to cellebrite rather than Apple? Cellebrite offers more but Apple does lump sum, from what I can tell.

I guess thats what stops you selling it to multiple orgs.

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