iOS jailbreaking would be valuable not only to the NSA, these private companies will sell and re-sell the exploit to multiple parties. So buying it for $1m and

iOS jailbreaking would be valuable not only to the NSA, these private companies will sell and re-sell the exploit to multiple parties. So buying it for $1m and then selling it to 5 or 6 governments or agencies at $0.5m a time results in a tidy little profit. Have a look at the Italian cybersecurity firm Hacking Team, they were routinely selling exploits or packages of exploits to governments around the world. There was no exclusivity agreement for these sales. As for apple paying as others have mentioned they dont pay bug bounties and usually these vulnerabilities are found by people jailbreaking iPhones, they are usually released for free and at that stage apple can patch the vulnerability for their next software version. I expect that this will be the end of free jailbreaks on apple products now, selling your exploit will become too valuable to release for free (at least remotely executable exploits will).