Facebook Rewards $10,000 USD to 10-Year-Old Who Hacked Into Instagram
What did you do today?
Facebook’s bug bounty program, which monetarily rewards members of the public who find bugs and flaws within its digital infrastructure, may have just given a payout to its youngest participant yet. According to Finnish news outlet Iltalehti, a 10-year-old called Jani (last name undisclosed) was able to hack into Instagram’s servers to delete the comments of any user on the social media platform, saying that he could even delete the sage words of Justin Bieber if he so desired. When he showed this gaping flaw to Facebook — which owns Instagram — he was promptly paid a healthy sum of $10,000 USD for his troubles.
Jani’s father told Iltalehti that Jani and his twin brother had found deficiencies in websites before, but this is the first instance that was serious enough to warrant a cash reward. In 2015, Facebook reported a total of 13,000 submissions last year, of which 526 were recognized as valid. Of those 526, 210 researchers were paid a total of $936,000 USD, or an average of $1,780 USD per submission.
