Indians have proved their mettle time and again the fields of software development and this time. The tech giant companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple are giving away a huge amount of money to anyone who can report a vulnerability in one of their products.

A young hacker Arun S Kumar, a 20-year-old from Kollam, Kerala has received a Rs 10.70 lakh ($16,000) bounty after finding a vulnerability in Facebook code. Facebook began the bug bounty program in 2011, under which people who notify flaws on its website are given a reward.

Indian Hacker Rewarded By Facebook:

Arun detected the bug on August 29 and reported it to the Facebook security team. One of them wrote back to him the very next day saying his discovery helped them to prevent a massive security breach. The team fixed the bug by September 6 and after three days Arun got a mail from them informing him about their decision to reward him. Arun Kumar was awarded Rs 10.70 lakh ($16,000) for finding a major vulnerability in the Facebook Business Manager. 

Arun Said: “In my latest bug hunting, I found that Facebook’s business manager is vulnerable to cyber-attacks as anyone could hack the page of a business establishment or organization in 10 seconds. This application provides direct access to objects based on user-supplied input. This helps the attackers’ bypass authorization and access resources in the system directly. It was on August 29 that I reported it to the Facebook. The next day they acknowledged it and on September 6 I was informed that they have fixed the bug. A security team member of Facebook informed me 10 days later that they will pay me a bounty of 16,000 dollars”.

This is not the first time. Arun had spotted many bugs in Google and Facebook in the past. Facebook had paid out a Rs 7 lakh bounty to him in April for finding a vulnerability. The young techie has received about Rs 30.85 lakh ($46,000) in payouts for hunting down bugs in the past three years.

Since the hacker would be able to manipulate the page of any Facebook user, the damage it would bring is beyond imagination,” said Arun.

He was also awarded the tenth place in the Facebook’s hall of fame of the white hat hackers. He is the only Indian to be honored in the website’s hall of fame. The best part is Arun S Kumar is still an undergraduate! A native of Mundakkal in Kollam, Kumar has just completed three years and still one year away from getting his engineering degree. He told the paper that he wanted to use the money to fund his higher studies which he wants to pursue abroad.

We are so proud of you Arun ! Share this story with your friends and inspire all the budding hackers.