Zerodium Now Pays $1M for Exploits

[grarpamp]

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvqq97/whatsapp-imessage-exploits-zero-days-1-million

NSA's / CIA's / In-Q-Tel's / FBI's / FVEY's partners... Zerodium,
Vupen, Azimuth, and Crowdfense ...

Zerodium, a startup that buys and sells hacking tools and exploits to
governments around the world, announced on Monday price increases for
almost everything they are looking for, such as iOS remote jailbreaks
and Windows exploits. "It said it will now pay security researchers
$1,000,000 for exploits in WhatsApp, iMessage, and SMS/MMS apps for
all mobile operating systems." Compromising the whole iPhone,
sometimes referred to as remote jailbreaking or rooting the phone, can
cost $2 million or more, and usually involves a series of bugs and
exploits. The price increase shows that mobile devices in general are
getting more and more secure, and thus harder to hack. That means that
it's becoming increasingly hard for hackers to break into iOS and
Android devices. That makes the life of folks like spy agencies and
police departments harder too. That's where Zerodium and other similar
companies, such as Azimuth and Crowdfense, come in: they act as
intermediaries between security researchers and government agencies
looking for tools -- often called zero-days -- to break into targets.
Before today, Zerodium was willing to pay $500,000 for WhatsApp and
iMessage exploits, according to an archived version of the company's
site. These new prices are in line with the market, according to Maor
Shwartz, who used to run a company that acquired and sold exploits to
government agencies.