Apple pays $100,500 reward to student who found Safari security flaw
The company has not commented on the detected fault
Photo: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images
Apple paid a $100,500 reward to a cybersecurity student who was able to hack into a Mac computer's webcam thanks to a bug in the Safari code.
It is estimated that the figure received by Ryan Pickren is the largest reward given by Apple since you started your bounty program to identify any kind of security breaches.
According to Pickren the flaws that it detected and that were linked by Safari and iCloud services have already been solved by the company. In this way it cannot be used by computer criminals to try to take control of a Mac.
The student explains that in the event of an attack, the person would have had full access to all web-based accounts, from iCloud to PayPal, as well as permission to use the microphone, camera, and screen sharing.
Apple has not officially referred to the error detected by Pickren, so it is unknown if this flaw in the system was exploited at some point by hackers.
The maximum amount that can be awarded by the Apple rewards system can be up to $1,000,000. This figure is reserved for highly complex security flaws that are easily exploited by hackers.
known fault
Days ago computer security experts from the FingerprintsJS firm had reported the error in the Apple browser code. On that occasion it was found out that the flaw affected the most recent versions of the Apple operating system, such as iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey.
The only alternatives known so far to avoid being affected by the security breach consisted of blocking JavaScript by default and only activating it on trusted websites.
The other option was to temporarily change the browser, however in the case of the iOS or iPadOS operating systems this will not make any difference since the flaw also affected the rest of the browsers
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