I understand what you're saying here: why share the fact they've broken the SE for $100k when they can keep making millions.
But if they cracked the SE, and kept that fact to themselves, they would be making even more money because every government on the planet would be coming to them. This is provided they kept it to themselves.
It would mean a significant spike in the number of phones being cracked and people being arrested/charged/hung/etc. This would be a statistic that would jump off the charts and trigger Apple to essentially develop a solution straight away.
The only way this would work is if they had cracked the SE and are doing an Enigma: keeping it top secret and only cracking very high profile targets with the technology, which I guess is possible.
The risky.biz podcast proposed a solution, half seriously and half in jest, offer 50 million for the bug bounty. It would destroy the working relationships and trust of the group of people that is required to come up with multi stage exploits, and apple has the cash to do that once or twice.
But if they cracked the SE, and kept that fact to themselves, they would be making even more money because every government on the planet would be coming to them. This is provided they kept it to themselves.
It would mean a significant spike in the number of phones being cracked and people being arrested/charged/hung/etc. This would be a statistic that would jump off the charts and trigger Apple to essentially develop a solution straight away.
The only way this would work is if they had cracked the SE and are doing an Enigma: keeping it top secret and only cracking very high profile targets with the technology, which I guess is possible.