Greg's Corner

Off topic Friday: 10-year-old gets $10K from Facebook for hacking Instagram

Apparently this kid knows his code.

A 10-year-old boy from Finland has become the youngest person to receive payment from Facebook’s bug bounty program. The program rewards individuals who can find vulnerabilities in Facebook without causing malice. The young man, known only as Jani, was able to find a flaw in the Facebook-owned Instagram where he was able to delete anyone’s comments without having an Instagram account. Facebook set up a test account for him to alter and he was able to do so with ease. In turn Facebook rewarded the boy with $19,000 for ethically showing them the flaw in Instagram. They say this particular reward was higher than normal since the flaw could have affected everyone on the photo sharing network.

What were you doing when you were 10? Were you this advanced? When this blogger was ten the closest he got to a computer was his Atari game console. Or were you more of a 90’s kid obsessed with Pokemon? Or were you already on your way, like Jani, to being a computer whiz?