this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
110 points (94.4% liked)

Technology

59427 readers
3178 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
L3s@fry.gs
L4s@fry.gs
L4s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
110
Russian zero-day seller offers $20M for hacking Android and iPhones | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)
submitted 1 year ago by ijeff@lemdro.id to c/technology@lemmy.world
5 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from !android@lemdro.id

  • Operation Zero, a Russian company, has increased its bounty for zero-day exploits on iPhones and Android devices from $200,000 to $20 million.
  • The company sells these exploits exclusively to Russian private and government organizations, specifying that the end user is a non-NATO country.
  • The high bounties may be temporary and are a reflection of market demand and the difficulty of hacking iOS and Android platforms.
  • Unlike traditional bug bounty platforms, Operation Zero sells vulnerabilities to governments without alerting the affected vendors.
  • The zero-day market is largely unregulated, but affected by geopolitics, such as new regulations in China that aim to corner the market for intelligence purposes.
top 5 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.uk 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Surely someone with that kind of money and need would start with a $5 wrench attack. You can buy a lot of persuasion for $20m.

[–] Arbiter@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It depends on what you’re trying to do.

It’s hard to use the $5 wrench on millions of people at a time.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Which then makes me wonder what they're looking for, which they couldn't get otherwise. Data is cheap and we let companies get away with so much

Maybe they can't use the wrench on the target without an international incident? So they need to cloud the search by hitting a larger group of people

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] essteeyou@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

If only Google and Apple could offer more...

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 4 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Operation Zero, which is based in Russia and launched in 2021, also added that “as always, the end user is a non-NATO country.” On its official website, the company says that “our clients are Russian private and government organizations only.”

Zelenyuk also said that the bounties Operation Zero offer right now may be temporary, and a reflection of a particular time in the market, and the difficulty of hacking iOS and Android.

“The price formation of specific items is heavily dependent on availability of the product on the zero-day market,” Zelenyuk said in an email.

For at least a decade, various companies around the world have offered bounties to security researchers willing to sell the bugs and hacking techniques to exploit those flaws.

Unlike traditional bug bounty platforms like Hacker One or Bugcrowd, companies like Operation Zero don’t alert the vendors whose products are vulnerable, but instead sell them to government customers.

Crowdfense, a competitor based in the United Arab Emirates, offers up to $3 million for the same kind of chain of bugs on Android and iOS.

The original article contains 721 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!