Charlie Miller: “Apple Is a Company Like Most Others, It Wants to Make Money”

Prominent hacker and security researcher Charlie Miller believes Apple is a company like any other, in that it cares most about the bottom line. He offered his thoughts, and elaborated quite a bit, in an interview with Markin Abras at MacDirectory.

Abras recalls that Miller last year demonstrated a proof-of-concept attack that would enable a developer to execute arbitrary code on any iDevice.

Instead of reporting straight to Apple, and to Apple only, Miller decided to blow the whistle on his findings. The move got him banned from the Apple Developer Program temporarily.

“I didn't really think about what Apple's response would be,” Miller sincerely stated. “I was only thinking about getting a serious vulnerability fixed and demonstrating that the App store review process couldn't prevent these types of attacks.”

Abras was curious whether or not Miller’s perception of Apple changed following the Mac maker’s decision to kick him out of the Dev program.

“I'm not sure it has changed,” said Miller. “Apple is a company like most others, it wants to make money. It puts exactly as much money into security as it thinks it needs to in order to not affect sales in a negative way.”

He elaborated, saying “Apple reacts to news like my research in the way it thinks will minimize negative publicity, which consequently minimizes any loss of sales.”

The renowned security guru went on to say, “No company really cares about security for its own sake -- they care about their bottom line and so they care about security enough to not affect (or minimize) the impact to their bottom line.”

Apparently Miller isn’t afraid to give Apple a piece of his mind, regardless of whether he’ll be reaccepted in the company’s developer program.