Apple Raises Bug Bounty Prizes Of Up To IDR 80 Billion, Encourages Security Researchers To Reveal IOS Gap

JAKARTA - Apple finally loosened its wallet. The Cupertino tech giant officially raised the prize for the Bug Bounty program, which is a reward for security researchers who managed to find a security gap in Apple products.

Starting November 2025, the highest prizes to be obtained will jump to 2 million US dollars, or around Rp. 33 billion. In fact, through a new bonus system, the value could reach 5 million US dollars, or more than Rp. 80 billion.

This program is led by Ivan Krsti Badminton, Vice President of Apple's Security Engineering and Architecture Division. He emphasized that this increase was made to reward researchers with high abilities who were able to find the most complex gaps, especially those similar to fireworks-class spyware attacks.

"We are ready to pay millions of dollars for these findings, and there is a reason," Krsti Badminton told Wired. We want to ensure that researchers with extraordinary expertise, who devote time and effort to penetrate the harshest security protection, get extraordinary rewards.

Apple also introduced a new system called Target Flag, which allowed researchers to receive awards even before improvements were released. In its official announcement, Apple showed a list of expanded security categories including short-range wireless exploits and WebKit sandbox escape attacks with just one click.

Interestingly, Apple is now also looking to attract new researchers. They set a new prize level worth $1,000 for reports of low-impact problems. This rate was previously a trial, but from November 2025 it will be a permanent part of Apple's reward system.

Apple's Bug Bounty program was first launched in 2016, only open to registered security experts. Now, the program is being expanded to a public version of Apple Security Bounty that anyone can follow. Since opening to the public in 2020, Apple claims to have paid more than $35 million to more than 800 security researchers worldwide.

Registration for the 2025 security program is still open until October 31. With a jump in rewards of up to $5 million, Apple seems to want to send a clear message: it's better if bugs are found by honest researchers than by malicious hackers.