Parents of Nineties’ children didn’t enjoy them constantly starting at computer screens, but that’s probably because not many of them were able to find security-threatening bugs in the code of one of the most popular apps in the world.
A ten-year-old boy has done just that, and the app in question? Well, just that app Facebook bought for US$1-billion — Instagram.
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After discovering the bug and reporting it to Facebook, the company rewarded the Finnish kid with US$10 000, which seems a bit slim considering what the bug could’ve meant for the likes of Justin Bieber.
Speaking to Finnish publication Iltalehti (translation by The Guardian), he explains how:
“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. I could have deleted anyone’s – like Justin Bieber’s for example – comments.”
Instagram and Facebook has given a number of citizen-hackers cuts for reporting threatening bugs, but this Finnish boy is the youngest thus far.
So, what have you done today?
