A Bengaluru-based computer programmer, Anand Prakash has received $15,000 (approximately Rs 10 lakh) from social network Facebook as a reward, for reporting a bug through which he was able to hack into any Facebook account using relatively simple software.
Anand Prakash, a product security engineer at Flipkart, wrote in a blog post on February 22 that he had found a simple vulnerability that could have been used to hack into any user’s Facebook account to get access to credit or debit card details, personal pictures, and messages without any user interaction.
The 22-year-old further wrote that he has earned around Rs 1.2 crore just by reporting bugs for Facebook, Twitter and a host of other US-based companies.
“I started doing this after completing my graduation in B.Tech. I have so far reported 90 bugs for Facebook and around 30 for Twitter,” he said.
“On this site, I could try as many times as I wanted. I used the brute force algorithm method which allowed me to try the combinations from 0 to 9 on the six-digit code. This was a bug which could be exploited by anyone,” Prakash added.
Facebook, as well as many other technology giants, run bug bounty programmes to encourage independent ethical hackers to try and crack their security code in order to identify vulnerabilities in the system. In 2015, the social media giant paid a total of $936,000 to 210 researchers for finding bugs.
Born in Bhadra, Rajasthan, Prakash went to Vellore Institute of Technology to pursue his B Tech in computer science engineering. According to a report by YourStory.com, Prakash has earned over Rs 1 crore so far by finding such bugs and has reported over 80 bugs to Facebook alone. In 2015, he was ranked No. 4 and globally by Facebook for finding the most bugs on the social networking website. Major companies that have paid him for finding bugs in their code include Google, Twitter, Adobe, RedHat, SoundCloud, Nokia, PayPal and eBay, among others.
Prakash's award of $15,000 was towards the high end of the payment spectrum as the average payout for identifying bugs in the system in 2015 was $1,780. Hackers from India, Egypt, and Trinidad & Tobago lead the bounty payout programme.
In a blog post, Prakash -- who also works as a security analyst at Flipkart -- said Facebook acknowledged the issue promptly and fixed it.
Prakash sent the bug report to the Facebook security team on February 22 and received a mail about the reward on March 2.
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