A 10-year-old schoolboy from Helsinki, Finland, has received a bounty of $10,000 (PHP 471,795) from tech giant Facebook, after discovering a vulnerability on its Instagram code.
The young lad, identified only as ‘Jani’, uncovered a flaw that allowed him to delete other users’ comments, apart from his own.
“I tested whether the comments section of Instagram can handle harmful code. Turns out it can’t. I noticed that I can delete other people’s comments from there,” the young hacker told Helsinki-based newspaper, Iltalehti. “I could have deleted anyone’s – like Justin Bieber’s for example – comments.”
The bug was addressed and fixed in late February, while “Jani” received his hefty payment in March.
The report added that “Jani” has been interested in coding and video games for two years, as he sees information security as a ‘dream job’.
He honed his craft by simply watching instructional videos on YouTube, together with his twin brother.
Meanwhile, Instagram, which was bought by Facebook in 2012, is part of its “bug bounty” program, which rewards cash prizes for people who spot chinks in Facebook’s digital armor.
It has paid upwards of $4.3 million to more than 800 people, who have spotted bugs in the social network’s programming, according to spokesperson for the photo sharing app.
While reports from teenagers are not uncommon, the Finnish boy became the youngest person ever to be granted the money.
Ironically enough, the boy is not even old enough to have his own account, according to Instagram’s minimum age policy.
“Jani”, meanwhile, has expressed a desire to purchase a soccer ball and a bicycle with his prize money. Khristian Ibarrola