If there is one who is happy when it comes to hacking Instagram, it is no other than Facebook's CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, the hacker even received $10,000 as a reward for identifying the photo-sharing application's security bug.
As reported by The Verge, the hacker, who is named as Jani, was commended by Zuckerberg for hacking into the security system of Instagram. The 10-year-old boy based in Helsinki (who is not even in the right age to sign up for a Facebook account) discovered a flaw, which allows one to remove all written content on the aforesaid social media site just by simply altering the code.
The flaw, according to him, was too risky to go unnoticed that he can "eliminate anyone, even Justin Bieber," from Instagram. Jani reportedly sent his findings to Facebook through an email. And in order to verify his claim, he deleted a comment that the company recently posted using a test account in Instagram.
The bug that put Instagram -- a social media platform that is also owned by Facebook -- was eventually resolved in February. However, it was only in March when Zuckerberg and his team officially informed Jani of the "job well done" on Instagram and gave him his "hacking" reward.
According to The Next Web, Jani became the youngest recipient of monetary reward from Facebook, after hacking one of its products, particularly, Instagram. It is noted that the previous record was set by a 13-year-old kid way back 2013.
Jani's hacking of Instagram is just among the many recipients of Facebook monetary rewards, since the bug bounty program was launched in 2011. The said program has given roughly $4.3 million to more than 800 researchers (or yeah, hackers) all over the world.
The payout is determined on how risky the discovered bug is, rather than how complex it should be. And with the recent incident involving Jani, it just goes to show how serious the Instagram issue could have been.
