Age is but a Number

A 10 year old hacker from Finland was able to detect a massive defect in Instagram’s photo sharing service.  Facebook awarded the hacker kid of $10,000.

Residing in Helsinki, the kid named Jani, stated that the defect that he found could allow him to delete any comment and/or caption before sharing a picture. Jani tested out his claim by successfully being able to delete the comment that the Instagram team posted on someone’s wall.

Jani had to ability to delete comments made by celebrities or regular users.

Jani had to ability to delete comments made by celebrities or regular users.  Photo Credit: Instagram

 The prize that Jani received was through Facebook’s Bug Bounty Program. Through this program, people who successfully discover a bug in any of Facebook’s  apps. Anyone who is able to discover the most serious security vulnerability, will win the grand amount. In 2015, Facebook paid a total of $936,000 to 210 different people who found vulnerabilities in their software.

Julia Persaud said, “It makes me feel unsafe because if a 10 year old boy can hack Instagram, then the private accounts may not be as secure as I thought.”

Jani learned hacking strategies through Youtube during his free time. He plans on investing the money he was given into a bicycle, football equipment, birthday party, and computers for his brothers. After all, what else could a 10 year old want!

He sent a humorous letter to Facebook to “highlight other flaws.” His childish charm was revealed in the letter which described other “issues” he has discovered. It includes issues on the Playstation which allows his mom to turn it off, a bug on Facebook that doesn’t allow girls to like his status, and signals on his iPad that cause his parents to fight. He’s truly a child a heart and genius by mind.