Facebook Paid This 10-Year-Old RM40,000 For Hacking Into Instagram
That's a lot of money for a kid.
By John Lim — 04 May 2016, 04:13 PM
This gives a whole new meaning to the Rich Kids of Instagram phenomenon.
Facebook has awarded a 10-year-old Finnish boy USD10,000 (RM40,000) for hacking into Instagram, which the social media giant owns.
If you didn't know, Facebook acquired Instagram back in 2012 for a staggering amount of USD1 billion.
The boy, identified only as Jani said to have found a glitch on Instagram that allowed him to delete any comment and account on the social platform, including Justin Bieber's
According to Finnish media, the boy—named only as Jani—found he could delete other people’s comments and account by inserting malicious code into the comment field. Jani said he could even have executed the attack against the account of Justin Bieber, if he wanted to.
fortune.com
Yeah, Beliebers. This kid did you guys a huge favour.
Jani, who is too young to even own a Facebook account, reported the bug to Instagram back in February. He was rewarded in late March.
According to Jani's dad, he and his twin brother had found flaws in websites before, but this is the first instance that was serious enough to warrant a cash reward
Pretty sure most of us were learning how to start up a computer at the age of 10. Kids these days...
To date, Facebook's bug bounty programme has paid out over $4.3 million since 2011 to over 800 researchers
Like many larger online firms, Facebook pays security researchers to inform it of the flaws they find and to encourage them to locate bugs before anyone else do.
You have a bug to report to Facebook too? More details here.
Well done, kid! Now make it rain!
Honestly though, USD10,000 is too little for reporting such a major bug. Don't you think so, Mark Zuckerberg?