Apple has unveiled a bug bounty program offering as much as $1 million to any hacker who could successfully penetrate the servers powering its upcoming Apple Intelligence service.

The program was unveiled last week. It intends to test aggressively the servers that will process some Apple Intelligence requests. These requests would be part of Apple's AI-powered service, set to be officially launched next week.

Apple is appealing to security experts, hackers, and researchers to find vulnerabilities in its Private Cloud Compute (PCC) servers, where data processing will be done if the requests exceed a device's capacity.

Apple has been preparing ahead of this launch by opening up its servers for privacy experts to inspect them and deploying a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) for security analysis.

In addition to the above, Apple has another Private Cloud Compute Security Guide that shows how requests are authenticated and describes how the software runs safely inside the data centers of Apple as well as the defense mechanisms against cyberattacks against PCC.

This guide, important as it is, sheds light on the protocols used by Apple in handling data since it was created to be resistant to any unauthorized access and ensures the confidentiality of sensitive user data.

It is through its VRE that Apple allows anyone to dig into the PCC's software inside the Mac-based environment.

With VRE, the researcher can view each version of the PCC release; track the security updates about PCC; and in some areas, communicate directly with the source code that some Apple has published on GitHub.

The million-dollar bounty being organized for this challenge would be split into three basic areas:

Accidental Data Exposure: Mistakes that might lead to data exposure unintentionally because of the servers' configuration or design.
External Compromise through User Requests: Vulnerabilities that would allow the attackers to exploit user requests and get unauthorized access into PCC.
Physical or Internal Access Breaches: Weaknesses in the internal interfaces of PCC, which might allow unauthorized individuals to breach the system.
However, Apple guarantees money for any security issue that may affect PCC, even if it doesn't fall into any published category.

Here, the company will judge your report on the quality of presentation, proof of what can be exploited, and impact on users.