Famous hacker discovers drawback which allows any Facebook page to be hijacked
By Prempal Singh
A 20-year-old hacker from Kollam, India, has been awarded Rs. 10.70 lakh ($16,000) for exposing a critical security vulnerability in Facebook’s code that allows an opponent to hijack any facebook page in less than 12 to 15 seconds.
Arun S Kumar, computer engineering student with Kerala University’s MES Institute of Technology and Management, found out the flaw in facebook Business Manager on 29 August and reported it to Facebook, in accordance to The Times of India.
In less than 24 hours, an associate of the social network’s security team replied to him, praising him for helping to prevent a huge security breach. Facebook fixed the flaw by 6 September and then contacted Kumar again to tell him that they had decided to honor him a bug resources.
This is simply not Kumar’s first time spotting critical flaws – he has spotted multiple vulnerabilities during the last three years for both Facebook and Google, and has been paid a total of $46,000 in bug bounties.
In August, Kumar was encouraged by Facebook to go to las Vegas to meet with Facebook’s security team, with each other with three other cyber-hackers from different countries. This individual was also inducted into Facebook’s white hat hacker hall of fame. The set of inductees in 2016 up to now numbers 130, and Kumar is ranked number 10 on the list.
Kumar has been keeping the money he has earned from the various bug bounties in order to one day account further education in an university abroad.
Source: International Business Times UK