On May 13, 2020, Zerodium said it would temporarily stop acquiring three types of Apple iOS exploit submissions because it had received many of them. It also forecast lower prices for a narrower category: iOS one-click exploit chains without persistence. The announcement described one broker’s conditions at that time—not a verified market-wide price drop or a measure of iOS security today.
What Zerodium announced
Zerodium’s May 13, 2020 post said it would not acquire new Apple iOS local privilege escalation (LPE), Safari remote code execution (RCE), or sandbox escape submissions for the next two to three months, citing a high number of submissions in those vectors. SecurityAffairs reproduced the post, and SecurityWeek reported the announcement on May 14.
The acquisition pause and the price forecast had different scopes. The pause named LPE, Safari RCE, and sandbox escapes. The forecast concerned iOS one-click chains, such as those delivered through Safari, that did not provide persistence. The announcement did not say Zerodium had stopped buying every kind of iOS exploit or that prices for all iOS exploits would fall. SecurityAffairs’ report reproducing the announcement and SecurityWeek’s May 14 report preserve those distinctions.
Why Zerodium said submissions were in surplus
In an interview published May 19, Zerodium founder and CEO Chaouki Bekrar said the company had seen a spike in iOS submissions, particularly Safari RCE, sandbox escapes, and privilege escalations. He said Zerodium had first reduced its prices and then paused acquisitions of those capabilities for two to three months. Bekrar also attributed the increased submissions partly to more researchers working on iOS and public jailbreaks that made reverse engineering and bug discovery easier.
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These are Zerodium’s explanations, not an independently measured count of submissions or proof that any one factor caused the increase. SecurityWeek’s May 19 follow-up also includes commentary from other industry sources, but does not quantify the volume of submissions or the resulting market-wide price change.
What the historical price figures do—and do not—show
SecurityWeek’s May 14, 2020 report described these maximum figures for specific exploit capabilities:
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| Program or category | Reported maximum | Qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Zerodium iOS exploit chain | Up to $2 million | For a chain achieving persistence and requiring no user interaction; reported in May 2020. |
| Zerodium Android exploit chain | Up to $2.5 million | For the comparable chain category requiring no user interaction and achieving persistence; reported in May 2020. |
| Apple bug bounty | Up to $1 million | For exploits achieving persistence, bypassing PAC, and requiring no user interaction; reported in May 2020. |
These are historical ceilings, not current offers, and they do not price interchangeable capabilities. A one-click chain that requires a user action and lacks persistence is different from a no-user-interaction chain that achieves persistence. The reports do not give a specific price for the one-click, no-persistence chains mentioned in Zerodium’s forecast.
Did exploit prices actually fall?
The May 2020 announcement establishes that Zerodium forecast a near-term decline for iOS one-click chains without persistence. Bekrar later said the company had already reduced prices before announcing the pause. Neither the announcement nor the cited follow-up reporting quantifies that earlier reduction or documents how much prices subsequently fell. The available reporting therefore supports a broker-specific supply story and forecast, not a measured price chart or proof of a broad market decline.
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What the announcement says about iOS security today
On its own, a broker pausing purchases because it says submissions are numerous does not show that iOS became less secure, that vulnerabilities became more prevalent, or that every exploit category was easier to develop. It describes Zerodium’s reported acquisition decisions in May 2020. The sources cited here do not establish Zerodium’s current iOS acquisition categories, prices, or submission terms.
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