10-year-old paid $14,000 for finding Instagram security flaw

 

A 10-year-old boy who found a bug in the Instagram app has been paid US$10,000 (NZ$14,000) for finding the flaw.

bug was discovered by a boy called Jani (his parents won't give his last name) and he has been rewarded as part of Facebook's bug bounty programme, Finnish news site Iltalehti reported.

Jani managed to find a way to get into the servers used by Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, and then delete what people wrote in their posts.

He removed words from a Justin Beiber post and emailed a screenshot to Instagram. A few days later he got his reward.

Jani wants to be a computer security expert and plans to spend the reward money on a new bike and football.

Last year, Facebook paid out nearly US$1 million to people who found bugs.