Instagram Hacked: Facebook Awards 10-Year-Old $10,000 For His Endeavors [VIDEO]
Apparently, hacking Instagram is child's play. In a very interesting turn of events, Facebook has awarded $10,000 to a very young Finnish hacker who was able to discover a serious security flaw on the popular photo-sharing network's systems. The security flaw enabled the 10-year-old hacker to remove any comment from any active profile in the photo-sharing application.
By receiving Facebook's hefty reward, Helsinki-based Jani, whose last name has not been revealed due to a request from his parents, has become the youngest recipient of Facebook's bug bounty rewards program. Previously, the record was held by a 13-year-old hacker.
Once Jani discovered the flaw, which resided in the network's private application programming interface, he immediately contacted Facebook about the issue. The social network giant promptly asked the 10-year-old wunderkind to remove a comment on a dummy account, which Jani of course did.
Facebook has stated that the company does not normally grant $10,000 rewards for its bug bounty program. Rewards such as the $10,000 Jani received are reserved for hackers who discover serious security flaws in the system.
Considering the nature of the bug that the 10-year-old hacker found, Jani's discovery was very serious, indeed. In fact, had it not been called into attention, it could have compromised a significant number of Instagram accounts.
"I would have been able to eliminate anyone, even Justin Bieber," Jani said in an interview with Finnish publication Iltalehti.
Instagram users need not worry, however, as Facebook announced that the security flaw has been addressed since February. Thus, those who are fond of commenting on their connections' photos are at no risk at all.
Facebook's bug bounty program has already paid out a significant amount to hackers since the program was launched back in 2011. Since then, the social media giant has paid out about $4.3 million to over 800 individuals who were fortunate and talented enough to find a chink in the network's armor.
Being a reasonable 10-year-old, Jani stated that his reward would be spent on some soccer gear, a great new bike for him and his brother, and of course, even more powerful computers.
