“On Wednesday, Operation Zero announced on its Telegram accounts and on its official account on X, formerly Twitter, that it was increasing payments for zero-days in those platforms from $200,000 to $20 million.”
That is a 100x raise. Zerodium tops out at $2.5 million for a zero-click Android chain and Crowdfense at $3 million. Operation Zero says its clients are Russian private and government organizations only, and its CEO won’t explain the non-NATO rule beyond “obvious” reasons. Every researcher who takes the check turns a phone bug into a Russian state tool instead of a patch.