Newshub18:An Indian student got a reward of Rs 38 lakh for saving millions of Instagram accounts from being hacke.A Jaipur student has been awarded for protecting millions of Instagram accounts from being hacked. He found a very serious bug in the photo/video sharing platform. And for this great work, Instagram awarded the student of Jaipur 38 lakh rupees. A Jaipur student reported a bug, which allowed users to change their Instagram reel thumbnails from any account without providing a login and password. And it was this bug that opened the way for hackers to freely access Instagram users’ accounts, which are now completely secure thanks to the ingenuity of an Indian student.
The student reported the Instagram and Facebook bugs to Meta in January after experiencing some issues with his own Instagram account. The company acknowledged this and asked him to share a demo of it as well.He later proved his claim by showing a 5-minute demo, where he could change a reel’s thumbnail without the need for account credentials. After conducting a thorough investigation, Facebook approved the Indian student’s report on May 11 and awarded him USD 45,000, which is roughly Rs 38 lakh in Indian currency. Not only that. Facebook has also offered USD 4500 i.e. Rs 3.6 lakh for the award to be delayed by four months.The student claimed to the media, “Instagram had a bug, through which the thumbnail of the reel could be changed from any account.
No matter how strong the account holder’s password was, only the account’s media ID was required to change it. I found this error in my Instagram account in December last year. After a lot of hard work, on the morning of January 31, I came to know about Instagram’s (bug) mistake. Then I sent a report to Facebook. Had this mistake on Instagram at night and got a reply from them after three days. I was asked by Facebook to share a demo.”Facebook and Instagram are running a Meta bug bounty program live for Meta programmers to strengthen their security.
The company rewards external programmers and researchers with large sums of money if they find any security vulnerabilities in meta-technologies and programs. “We recognize and reward security researchers who help keep people safe by reporting vulnerabilities in our products and services. Financial rewards for such reports are entirely at Meta’s discretion, based on risk, impact, number of vulnerable users, and other factors,” said Meta’s bug bounty program