The rising cost of cracking iPhone security and privacy
iPhone has long been considered the mobile phone that best protects users security and privacy.
My point here is not in support of exploit brokers. It is to point out the difficulty in hacking the iPhone OS.
Zerodium, an exploit broker, has announced that it is offering $1.5 million dollars for an iOS 10 zero-day exploit. That’s a big jump over last year’s offering of $1,000,000 for a remote jailbreak of the iPhone’s current OS.
Lily Hay Newman, Writing for Wired
“We’ve increased the price due to the increased security for both iOS 10 and Android 7,” company founder Chaouki Bekrar wrote to WIRED.
In a way, yes, it’s a little alarming that there’s so much incentive for someone to crack the iPhone. Then again, this also means it’s that much harder to crack.
After researching this story, I walked away with feeling that iOS is the most secure and private mobile operating system available. By comparison, Zerodium is offering $1.5 million for an iOS zero-day and only $200,000 for an Android zero-day. Why? Because iOS is much more secure and harder to hack.
The reason iOS is the most secure mobile OS is because of Apple’s commitment to user security and privacy.
This last week Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Utah speaking at the yearly meeting of the Utah Technology Council to discuss encryption, ‘making people safer’ and Steve Jobs.
TONY SEMERAD, Writing for the Salt Lake Tribune · October 1, 2016
Apple CEO Tim Cook offered a robust defense Friday of privacy protections for its customers, including the global company’s refusal to help U.S. authorities hack into the iPhone of a suspect in a San Bernardino mass shooting.
“We throw all of ourselves into this and are very much standing on principle in this,” Cook said before an enthusiastic Salt Lake City audience, drawing cheers.
“We believe the only way to protect both your privacy and safety from a cyberattack is to encrypt,” he told about 1,400 industry executives, tech workers and Apple fans.
This is why I have an iPhone.
