MENLO PARK, Calif. (Diya TV) — A 10-year-old boy found a bug in the popular photo uploading platform Instagram, which requires you to be at least 13 years old to sign up, that allowed him to delete any comment, and was rewarded with a $10,000 cash prize as a result.
Jani, a Finnish boy from Helsinki, discovered the glitch in the system on his own and reported it to the company in an email. He offered proof by deleting a message on one of Facebook’s — Instagram’s parent company — test accounts. The bug was fixed in February and Jani received his cash reward last month.
Jani said he learned his security skills by watching YouTube videos: “I would have been able to remove anyone, even Justin Bieber,” he said during an interview with the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti.
It should be no surprise the boys hopes to become a securities researcher when he grows up. “It would be my dream job,” he said. “Security is very important.” In the meantime, he has used the reward money to buy a new bike, football gear, and computers for his two brothers.
The 10-year-old’s discovery made him the youngest ever to be paid through Facebook’s bug bounty program. Before Jani, the youngest person to receive a reward was 13 years old. Youngsters have become quite adept at exposing security flaws in programs — the social media giant said it receives multiple reports from teenagers.
In February, Facebook revealed that it had paid more than $4 million in bug bounty rewards to more than 800 security researchers for over 2,400 submissions since the program was launched in August 2011. Instagram was added to the program in 2014 — Facebook bought the platform in 2012.
