There are only a few people in the world now who believes that ‘luck is not in your hands, rather decisions are there in your hands. It is your decisions which can make your luck but your luck can never make your decisions, so it is crucial to trust yourself always rather just depend on your luck.’ These lines are fit for this young Kerala student, Arun S Kumar, who is a computer engineering student from MES Institute of Technology, Kollam.
As far as the Digital Communication World is concerned, Facebook is one of the widely and commonly used tools, so it is very significant for it to provide safe and secure online activity to the huge number of people. Although, the social networking site facebook looks pretty safe but yet it seemed to have few bugs which are timely exploited by seasoned hackers. This ensures a greater level of security to users and this is the reason why Facebook loves people who find out these bugs and help it fix them. They also reward them with huge monetary benefits.
Arun S Kumar is one such hacker who exposed a critical vulnerability in Facebook Business Manager, through which, a hacker could take control of any Facebook page in less than 10 seconds. For this, he received a sum of Rs. 10.7 Lakhs ($16,000) from Facebook. He said that “Since the hacker would be able to manipulate the page of any Facebook user, the damage it would bring is beyond imagination.”
Such services are termed as “Bug Bounty” by Facebook. As per sources, Arun reported about the bug to Facebook security team on August 29. The team responded very next day and by September 6, the bug was fixed. After three days, Arun received a mail from Facebook that he’ll be receiving a “bug bounty” for pointing out the bug of $16,000.
Along with the prize money, he also got the opportunity to meet the Facebook ASecurity Team at Las Vegas upon their invitation along with being awarded a place in the Facebook’s Hall Of Fame for white hackers. Arun is the first Indian to receive this honor. Not only Facebook, there are many other tech giants who reward people for notifying them about the flaws on their platform.
Not only Facebook, Arun has been a professional hacker in finding out bugs. In April this year, he spotted another vulnerability for which he received a sum of Rs. 7 lakhs. In the last three years, he received more than Rs. 30 lakhs in payouts for reporting bugs in various websites including Google.
Yes, you heard it right, Rs. 30 lakhs for reporting bugs. So, it could be rightly said that there is power in people who dream big and who try hard.
