10-Year Old Hacker Rewarded $10,000: Facebook Gifts Finnish Boy For Exposing Instagram Bug

Facebook has a Bug Bounty program, which is now rewarding a 10-year old hacker from Finland $10,000. Finnish Jani discovered a bug on Instagram, about which the 10-year old genius warned Facebook.

The Washington Post reports that 10-year old hacker Jani discovered a way to delete comments on Instagram. The deletion can be done by Jani on any Instagram account.

According to the 10-year old hacker, Jani could even delete comment posted by celebrities such as Justin Bieber. Fortunately, though, Jani did not touch any of Justin Bieber's comments.

Under the Facebook Bug Bounty, Jani and his parents was rewarded $10,000. The discovery gives the 10-year old hacker the title of being the youngest bug bounty recipient on Facebook's program. The previous record-holder was 13 years old.

Facebook bought off Instagram for $1 billion in 2012. Needless to say, the 10-year old hacker's discovery is invaluable to Facebook Bug Bounty goals of finding security risks in their services.

The Mirror reports that Facebook Bug Bounty was initiated in 2011. Since then Facebook Bug Bounty has rewarded as many as 800 legitimate cases for a total of $4.3 million.

Facebook's Melanie Ensign said rewards from Facebook Bug Bounty program varies depending on the gravity of the risks reported. "We base our bounties on the scope of the risk, rather than the novelty or sophistication," Ensign stated.

For the most part Facebook Bug Bounty has been issuing modest rewards. Jani's discovery belongs to the more expensive Facebook Bug Bounty rewards as the 10-year old hacker uncovered a bug that would have had a huge impact on all accounts on Instagram.

Instagram has a policy of allowing sign ups only by users aged 13 and up. However, 10-year old Jani did not need to create an Instagram account or nor sign into Instagram to apply his hack.

This is a good things since Facebook Bug Bounty program is a stickler for rules. In the past some hackers did not receive their reward from Facebook's Bug Bounty program because of violations of terms and policies.