Apple Offers $2M Bounty to Anyone Who Can Crack its iOS 16 ‘Lockdown’ Mode!

At some point within the next 4-12 weeks, Apple is expected to announce the official consumer release of its latest iOS 16 operating system. While this will, of course, bring about a lot of new key changes and overall improvements, however, one of the most interesting new features will be the addition of a new super-secure ‘lockdown’ mode.

With Apple currently touting this as an ‘ultra-secure’ feature, the overall ethos of this new design is to, in theory, make stealing any data from the phone while having the mode activated completely impossible. – Apple is, in fact, so confident in its new design that following a report via edieta, they’re offering $2M bug bounty to anyone who can successfully crack and/or bypass this new security feature!

Apple Offers $2M iOS 16 Lockdown Mode Bounty!

Such bug bounty programs aren’t, of course, an overly unusual thing. In fact, in many respects, they represent a far better security investment for software manufacturers than simply paying a professional security corporation. – By incentivising the coding/security community as a whole (including non-professional enthusiasts)to check it out offers not only a larger group effort to try and find a security flaw, but more so, with a $2M incentive, literally anyone with just a little knowledge of coding and/or online security may stand a chance of claiming a pretty substantial amount of money.

And if nobody claims the bounty, well… Apple has a pretty good case to suggest that its new Lockdown mode is every bit as secure and good as they claim! If not, it’s only cost them $2M to identify a security bug which may have potentially cost the company significantly more if it was ever identified by blackhat hackers.

A Tough Lockdown Nut to Crack!

Apple seems fairly confident that the new ‘Lockdown Mode’ in iOS 16 is going to be pretty resilient, and, in terms of mobile security, one of the tersest security systems ever created. – Admittedly though, when activated the mode does seem to significantly hamper the ‘general usage’ of the device meaning that, overall, ‘Lockdown mode’ is really only going to be an ideal feature for those who suspect they may be the target of attempting phone hacking.

With beta versions of iOS 16 available now though, you are, so far as I can tell, free to start checking to see if you might be able to claim this $2M bug bounty. – If you would, therefore, like to learn more, you can check out the official Apple iOS 16 preview website via the link here!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!