Apple will pay the teen who discovered the FaceTime bug

The decision to award the bug was welcomed, but one security researcher said more needed to be done to compensate those who found a bug.

 

 An American teenager received a rare bounty award after discovering a security breach in Apple's FaceTime video calling service.

Grant Thompson, 14, from Arizona, discovered how this glitch allowed any iPhone user to video-call another iPhone user via FaceTime and listen to the other's audio. end, turning another device into a live microphone.

Although the amount of the bonus has not yet been revealed, Apple said that in addition to a reward, it would also offer a gift that will serve to his education.

According to a BBC report, Thompson and his mother warned Apple in early January with the virus. Ms. Thompson allegedly sent several emails to the company without a response at the beginning.

Apple has accredited the teenager to discover the flaw and has also released a software update that corrected several other issues related to the release of iOS 12.1.4, mainly focused on bug fixes, including the problem of FaceTime group .

However, not everything is rosy in the garden (apples) with a security researcher based in Germany and unhappy who refused to share details of a failure of macOS security. Linus Henze said online that he had found a way to collect passwords, private keys and victim keychain tokens.

He said he will not share the details with Apple until the company begins to compensate those who discover security breaches. Speaking to the registry's technical information site, he said, "My motivation is to have Apple create a bug bonus program. I think it's the best for Apple and the researchers.

"I really like Apple products and I want to make them safer. And the best way to secure them would be, in my opinion, if Apple creates a bug bonus program, as other large companies have already done. "