Given that the young hacker is three years shy of the age required to open an account on Facebook, he can’t even share the good news. The boy’s parents however are not tech-savvy for the father has reportedly said social media is gibberish to him.
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The 10-year-old “Mr. Robot” from Helsinki, Finland named Jani, discovered a way to delete all Instagram written content just by merely modifying a few lines of code. The loophole was found in a confidential application programming crossing point that was not inspecting whether the individual deleting the comment was the same user who posted it, a Facebook spokesperson told Forbes.
According to the 10-year old hacker, Jani could even delete comment posted by celebrities such as Justin Bieber. The API however was malfunctioning and was allowing deletion of comments with requisite authorization.
Facebook said the glitch was fixed in February and the reward paid in March.
“We base our bounties on the scope of the risk, rather than the novelty or sophistication”, said Melanie Ensign, a security representative at Facebook, in a telephone interview to The Washington Post. To date, Facebook has awarded around $4.3 million to 800 hackers for helping the social media giant upgrade its security.
Not all young hackers take the noble route and report the flaws they uncover. Facebook and Instagram then use such information to patch the security vulnerabilities and better guard how people access their services.
The Finn is also the youngest Facebook hacker, beating out a 13-year-old for the title, and one of the highest paid by the company.
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Jani plans to use the $10,000 to buy soccer gear, new bikes and new computers for him and his twin brother.
