Hackers claim they're able to remotely take over any iPhone running the latest software

Andrew Mager/Flickr

The bug bounty startup Zerodium launched a competition in September and offered $1 million to any team of hackers who could figure out how to crack the device. But there were a number of stipulations.

Zerodium required participants to remotely exploit iOS 9.1/iOS 9.2b using Safari, Chrome, a text message, or a multimedia message. It also required the exploit to work on a number of iOS iPhone and iPad models.

"Apple iOS, like all operating systems, is often affected by critical security vulnerabilities, however due to the increasing number of security improvements and the effectiveness of exploit mitigations in place, Apple's iOS is currently the most secure mobile OS," Zerodium states on its website. "But don't be fooled, secure does not mean unbreakable, it just means that iOS has currently the highest cost and complexity of vulnerability exploitation."

On Saturday, just before the competition ended, Zerodium announced that a team had submitted a qualifying exploit.

While it's normal for tech companies to host their own bug bounty competitions, Zerodium has made a business out of hosting these contests to find vulnerabilities in other companies' systems.

According to the company's website, "it rewards independent researchers for their zero-day discoveries and then analyzes, documents, and reports all acquired security information, along with protective measures and security recommendations, to its clients as part of the ZERODIUM Security Research Feed."

In other words, unlike other security research companies, it doesn't always share its exploit information with the company affected. And according to a Wired report, Zerodium's founder Chaouki Bekrar said the company does not plan to immediately share the information with Apple.

Tech Insider reached out to Apple for comment and will update as soon as we get a response.

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