Some kids save up allowance money to buy a afford a new bike. Jani, a 10-year-old Finnish boy, decided to hack Instagram, and now he’s $10,000 richer.
The Finnish tabloid Iltalehti reports that Jani found a means to infiltrate Instagam’s servers and delete text that any user has posted to accompany their photos. This is especially remarkable since Jani is three years shy of being able to make his own Instagram account. Also, he’s a 10-year-old hacker who found a bug that even Facebook’s mighty engineering team missed.
After discovering the vulnerability, the pre-teen emailed Instagram, who issued a patch within a few days. The $10,000 came from Facebook’s bug bounty program, which gave him 5.6 times their average payout and a fun story to tell his kids in 30 years. Jani and his twin brother are both adept at identifying bugs, but this is the first either has been paid for finding. Ten grand is not a bad start.
