The discovery of a bug on a popular social networking site has won a 21-year-old engineering graduate a reward of Rs. 8 lakh.
The
malfunction reportedly enabled users on Facebook to remove pictures
from other accounts without the knowledge or approval of the owner.
For
his discovery,Arul Kumar was awarded with Rs. 8,12,500($12,500) as
part of Facebook’s bug bounty programme through which it incentivises
those who find flaws on the networking site.
Arul Kumar, who hails from Salem, graduated from Hindustan Institute of
Technology in Coimbatore in June 2013 and is now in Chennai on the lookout
for a job
The Problem
“I have always been interested in the security of
frequently-used websites such as Google and Facebook. There has to be a
bug somewhere, and I keep testing every feature of these sites,” said
Arul.
It was during one such testing exercise that he
wondered if photos uploaded on Facebook by a user could be removed by
others. Users are aware of two ways to remove a picture from the site —
either the account owner removes it or somebody else who has a problem
with it uses the dashboard to request the Facebook team to remove it,
said Arul.
“But Facebook also has an option that asks
the user who uploaded the picture to remove it. When I tested the
feature, it turned out the request to remove the picture was sent to the
person who wanted it removed, and not to the one who uploaded it — that
was the bug,” he said.
It took a night for Arul to
verify the error, after which he sent a detailed report to Facebook.
“But they rejected my claim saying they could not detect the bug. It was
only when I sent them a video of the malfunction that they believed
such a bug existed.”
Great work young man, will be happy if Google give him continuous employment !
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