How to win $10000 not leaving home? Well, it‘s enough to know a bit about programming and find a bug in Facebook software. A 10-year-old Finn Jani, who found a bug in Instagram software has just got rich with this sum.
The app bought by Facebook for one billion dollar in 2012 still participates in a program, in which discovering a bug in a code is rewarded with a certain sum of money. Over 4 million dollars have been paid to more than 800 persons so far. The boy is the youngest person who‘s ever been gratified with this reward. Thus he dethroned Allex Miller from California who took $2800 from Mozilla in 2010, at the age of 12. Interesting point is that according to Facebook regulations, Finn is still too young to have its own profile on Instagram.
Jani found a gap through which every comment published by any Intagram user could have been deleted. He boasted with his exploits one of Finnish newspapers and told that he was able to delete even comments posted by Justin Bieber. Facebook fixed a bug in February and paid the reward in March.
The Finnish boy is interested in programming and computer games. He also has a twin brother. Both boys together have learnt coding from clips published on YouTube. As he said in person, he was thinking about career in the data security, which would be his dream job. Colleagues from Jani‘s school form were both surprised and astonished at a value of the reward. It was also a big surprise for boy‘s father.
What is he going to spend $10000 for? While interviewed by a newspaper he declared to buy himself, amongst others, a new bike and a football.
Bug bounty program
A list of companies that pay money in return for the bugs found is quite a long one. The rewards, however, are diversified. Among the most popular corporations the following companies could be listed.
Facebook ‘minimum reward $500,maximum sum not determined
Google ‘minimum reward $100, maximum‘ $20000
Yahoo ‘minimum reward $100, maximum‘ $20000
Mozilla ‘minimum reward $500, maximum $3000
WordPress ‘minimum reward $100, maximum $1000
Samsung Smart TV ‘minimum reward $500, maximum $3000
Microsoft ‘ minimum reward $500, maximum not determined
As we can see, the knowledge of programming languages is very profitable and due to the multitude of companies which involve their services with the Internet in any way, the labor market is enormous. This example of the ten-year-old boy from Finland shows there are absolutely no age limits as far as the money making and learning are concerned.