A brainy student, Neeraj Sharma, from Jaipur has been awarded a whopping Rs. 38 lakh for preventing the hacking of social media accounts of crores of people.
He reportedly found a bug in the popular social media app Instagram that allowed thumbnails on people’s accounts to be changed.Â
Jaipur Student Wins 38 Lakhs For Finding Bug In Instagram And Facebook
To change the thumbnails on Instagram, the hacker wouldn’t even need the user’s login ids and passwords. Sharma found a bug in Instagram and immediately alerted Facebook and Instagram. As per reports, after being alerted, both platforms checked for the authenticity of the bug.
Once they confirmed that the bug is authentic, they rewarded Sharma with Rs. 38 lakhs for his intelligence.
As per Sharma, the thumbnail of a reel can be changed from any account.
All that was required for a hacker was the media ID of the account. It would help change the password, regardless of how strong it is.
Sharma Found Bug Through Faults In Own Insta Account
“In December last year, I started finding fault with my Instagram account. After a lot of hard work, on the morning of January 31, I came to know about the (bug) mistake of Instagram. After this, I sent a report to Facebook about this mistake on Instagram at night and received a reply from them after three days. It asked me to share a demo,” he said.
Sharma demonstrated them in less than 5 minutes by changing the thumbnail. They approved his report, and on the evening of May 11, he received an email from Facebook informing him that he had been awarded a $ 45,000 reward (about Rs 35 lakh). At the same time, in lieu of the four-month delay in awarding the prize, Facebook also provided a bonus of $ 4500 (approximately Rs 3 lakh).
Previously, Laxman Muthiyah, who identified two bugs in one of the world’s most popular social media sites, Facebook-owned Instagram, within a month of each other. He got rewarded $30,000 and $10,000 for finding out these bugs and showing them to Facebook and Instagram.
In his blog, Muthiyah says that he identified a vulnerability in the app which enabled him to hack into any account without ‘consent permission.’ He also says that Instagram and Facebook have fixed the bug, and it doesn’t exist anymore.
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