10-Year Old Boy Becomes World’s Youngest Hacker, Receives $10,000 From Facebook For Detecting Instagram Bug [VIDEO]
ByThe young Finnish boy named Jani, whose last name is kept secret for privacy, detected a glitch in Instagram. Hence, the boy alerted the multi-billion dollar company Facebook had had a security flaw in its photo sharing platform. Thus, Mark Zuckerberg, the tech giants CEO and founder assigned a $10,000 reward for the world's youngest hacker.
Living the young hacker's life in Helsinki, Finland's capital, the young Jani found out that he could possibly delete other people's comments from Instagram using a maliscious code, according to Finnish newspaper Iltalehti.
Jani the boy genius discovered that he could infiltrate Instagram and demonstrated the hack without even logging into an account. He would have been able to get rid of anyone in IG, even "What Do you Mean" and "Sorry" Singer Justin Bieber, Jani said in the Iltalehti article.
The glitch was resolved in late February. After that, Jani received his reward on March. The loophole was found in a confidential application programming crossing point that was not inspecting whether the individual deleting the comment was the same user who posted it, a Facebook spokesperson told Forbes.
The $10,000 prize came from Facebook's Bug Bounty intiative that offers rewards to White Hat hackers and researchers who detect glitches or bugs within their digital network, including Instagram which has been acquired by Facebook in April 2012 for a whopping $1 Billion. Reportedly, the initiative has already received over 2,400 legitimate submissions since its launch. The programme has been around for five years now and has awarded more than $4.3 million.
Before Jani became the youngest compliant to the programme, the previous record was held by a 13-year-old in 2013. Meanwhile, he plans to spend his hactivist take-home pay on a new bicycle and football. He also shared that a career in internet security is his dream job, Iltalehti reported.
Watch the video of the report below!