An Arab company specializing in computer security offers a huge sum for those who are willing to disclose zero-day vulnerabilities to iOS, MacOS, Android si Windows. We are talking about vulnerabilities that are not known to the companies that develop these operating systems, and the company from the United Arab Emirates offers up to 3 million dollars for such exploits.
Crowdfense is the name of the company that is willing to offer so much money to cyber security researchers, it being recently founded in the United Arab Emirates. The purpose of buying such vulnerabilities is to develop software that exploits iOS, macOS, Android and Windows to extract any kind of data from the devices that run them.
According to Crowdfense, any kind of software developed based on these vulnerabilities will be sold to government or police agencies. Basically, we are talking about a business designed to gather exploits for iOS, macOS, Android and Windows, so that governments and the police can have much easier access to devices with the respective operating systems.
"When I think about government agencies I don't think about the military part, I think about the civilian part, that works against crime, terrorism, and stuff like that. We only focus on tools aimed at doing activities of law enforcement or intelligence, not aimed at destroying or deteriorating the functionality and effectiveness of the target systems—but only aimed at collecting intelligence."
iOS, macOS, Android and Windows are the only operating systems for which the discovery of vulnerabilities is desired, with a budget of 10 million dollars being allocated for the program. It is not known who finances Crowdfense, so the money could come from anyone, but that matters less, considering that it is not the only company that does this.
