Facebook Paid ₹10,70,000 To This Guy From Kerala. Here’s Why

Facebook is one of the most used tools of communication in the world. And every tool of communication needs to be secure. And although the Facebook website looks pretty safe, there still are a few bugs here and there which seasoned hackers look to exploit. For this reason, Facebook loves people who find out these bugs and help it fix them. And it shows its love by rewarding them with huge sums of money.

Facebook paid 10,70,000 rupees to an Indian guy. Recently in the year 2011, Facebook has started a new program known as big bounty, where people will get rewarded if they submit a bug that is found in Facebook’s code. Hackers find the vulnerability in Facebook’s code and submit it to Facebook and receive huge prizes.

From recent reports, A young hacker from Kollam has received a massive amount of bounty prize from Facebook after finding a vulnerability in the code of the website. Arun S Kumar is a computer engineering student at the MES Institute of Technology and Management in Chathannoor. He is a 20 years old Hacker who recently revealed a critical bug that can allow him to take control of Facebook’s any page in less than 10 secondswhile speaking to TOI Arun said, “Since the hacker would be able to manipulate the page of any Facebook user, the damage it would bring is beyond imagination”.

On August 29 he identified a bug and then reported the information about it to the Facebook security team. On the next day, one of the Facebook’s security team member wrote back to Arun saying his discovery helped them in the prevention of a big security breach. By September 6 the bug was fixed by the team and right after 3 days a mail for Arun telling him about the reward decided by Facebook.

Arun’s story is really surprising because he already received rewards from Facebook and Google in the past. In the month of April recently he got paid about Rs 7 lakh for finding a vulnerability in Facebook. Arun has received about Rs 30.85 lakh ($46,000) as payouts only for finding bugs in the last 3 years.

He was awarded the tenth place in the Facebook’s hall of fame of the white hat hackers. Also, Facebook has invited him along with other hackers from other countries for a meeting with security members at Las Vegas. Arun is the only Indian who is honored in Facebook’s hall of fame.

His father, P S Sureshkumar, is a clerk and his mother, Nagalakshmi K, is a housewife. Being poor did not stop him in learning things which normal people can only talk about. He also decided to use his prize money for higher education.