Vulnerability research firm Crowdfense has launched a new 0-day acquisition program and is promising payouts of up to $3 million for full-chain, previously unreported exploits.
Founded in 2017, the company says it “evaluates state-of-the-art active cyber-defense capabilities from the most talented researchers in the world,” and that it also tests and improves them before offering them to “a carefully selected group of global institutional customers.”
Last year, the company ran a $10 million bug bounty program that it says was very well perceived, and which also included free high-level technical training sessions that hundreds of vulnerability researchers around the world benefited from.
Building on last year’s success, the company has increased overall value of the program and also expanded its scope to include more areas of research, such as Networking Devices, WiFi/Baseband and Messengers.
“Payouts for full-chain, previously unreported, exclusive capabilities range from $100,000 USD to $3 million USD per successful submission. Partial chains will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and priced proportionally,” the company says.
0-day exploits the company is looking for include remote code execution (RCE) flaws in Chrome and Safari. Functional exploits targeting Chrome for Windows are worth up to $1.5 million, while those targeting Safari for macOS are worth up to $500,000.
The company is willing to pay up to $2.5 million for Safari RCE leading to privilege escalation on iOS, or up to $3 million for iOS RCE that doesn’t require user interaction, as long as persistence is also involved in the chain.
A Chrome RCE leading to privilege escalation on Android is worth up to $2 million, while a zero-interaction RCE on the platform is worth up to $3 million. Persistence is required in both cases, the company says.
Crowdfense is willing to pay up to $1.5 million for zero-interaction RCE flaws in IM or SMS apps or $1 million if user interaction is required.
RCE vulnerabilities in routers could get reporting researchers up to $100,000, while WiFi/Baseband RCEs leading to local privilege escalation could get them up to $500,000.
Security researchers looking to participate or learn specific details on the bug submission process and eligibility should join the company’s Vulnerability Research Hub (VRH).
Related: Zerodium Offers $2 Million for iOS Hacks, $1 Million for Chat App Exploits
Related: Zerodium Offers $500,000 for VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V Exploits
Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.
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