By Juanita Nonwo – EM TV Online
A 10-year-old Finnish boy has become the youngest recipient of the Facebook bug bounty after discovering a fault on Instagram.
Instagram, a social photo-sharing website owned by Facebook, had its server hacked by this youngest white-hat hacker who developed his skills by watching YouTube videos.
Jani, whose parents withheld his last name, found vulnerability on Instagram to alter codes that allowed him to delete posts from anyone he chose.
“I tried, if Instagram’s comment field could handle harmful codes. It didn’t. I found out I can delete other people’s comments from there, I could’ve deleted anyone’s, like Justin Bieber’s comments…” Jani told Iltalehti, a Finnish tabloid.
When Jani first discovered the glitch in February, he emailed Facebook, where the security engineers got him to prove his findings by creating a test account to see if he could delete a post, to which he did.
Jani received $10,000 from Facebook as a reward.
“I was very surprised that Jani has gotten so far already. I have no idea about that social media stuff,” said his father.
According to his father, Jani and his twin brother have been searching for vulnerabilities for quite a while now; they have even found a few, but because they were too young no rewards were given to them then.
Jani plans to use his prizemoney to purchase computers for his brothers and also a new bicycle and football equipment.
