10-year old bug hunter receives $10,000 from Facebook

As a part of its bug bounty program, Facebook has paid $10,000 to a 10-year old youth for finding a critical bug in Facebook-owned Instagram that let anyone delete comments on any post.

Jani, a little boy from Finland, wanted to do his part in helping the world’s social networks remain secure. He learnt basic security skills with the help of some YouTube videos and barely a few days later, he has managed to cash in an astounding amount of $10,000 from Facebook for his endeavours.

At the age of 10, Jani has become the youngest person ever to be paid by Facebook’s bug bounty program.

The bug in question allowed anyone to delete any comment on the photo-sharing social network, Instagram. It’s a pretty major security flaw which could allow the little boy to “remove anyone, even Justin Bieber”. It is a wonder how it was missed by the huge team of experts at Facebook or any of the other bounty hunters and shows the talent and potential that little Jani possesses. In the future too, he wants to become a security researcher.

“It would be my dream job,” he declared. “Security is very important.”

Like Google, Microsoft and other tech giants, Facebook also has an active bug bounty program that is always open to reports about flaws or bugs in any of its services. Launched in 2011, the program has led the social network to shell out $4.3 million in rewards to more than 800 security researchers for over 2,400 submissions.

Called security researchers, ethical hackers or white-hat hackers, these people are responsible for making technology much safer for all of us. Pakistan is also known for producing some of the brightest ethical hackers over the past few years, including (but not limited to) Muhammad Shahzad and Rafay Baloch. For more information on ethical hacking, you can visit our very own guide on “How to be an Ethical Hacker”.

Source-VentureBeat