Kerala: 19-year-old engineer fixes WhatsApp bug, gets honored by Facebook
What's the story
Social media giant Facebook hires the brightest minds in the world to offer the absolute best, bug-free experience to its users, however, recently, a bug did skip their eye.
The instant messaging app WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, reportedly had a memory corruption bug. Luckily, it was spotted; by a 19-year-old engineering student from Kerala nonetheless.
Here are all the details.
Details
The youth studies at Mount Zion College of Engineering
The 19-year-old, KS Ananthakrishna, is a B.Tech student at the Pathanamthitta Mount Zion College of Engineering.
According to a Mathrubhumi report, Ananthakrishna spotted the bug two months ago which allowed others to completely erase files on WhatsApp without the user's knowledge.
A resident of Alappuzha, Ananthakrishna informed Facebook about the bug and also attached a solution, the report added.
Response
Ananthakrishna given $500 cash reward
Facebook took Ananthakrishna's solution into consideration. After two months of observation, Facebook decided to honor the 19-year-old for providing them with a successful solution.
Reportedly, Ananthakrishna was given a cash prize of $500 (approximately Rs. 34,000). Facebook also gave him a spot on their coveted Hall of Fame, which the tech giant does only when someone reports serious lapses in their applications.
Information
Ananthakrishna researches ethical hacking over internet
Ananthakrishna landed up on the 80th spot on Facebook's list this year. Reportedly, he keeps himself busy exploring the internet to do research on ethical hacking. He worked for Kerala Police Cyberdome, a research and development center of Kerala Police.
History
Here are some other recent bugs reported in Facebook's apps
In recent reports, researchers had raised concerns about a bug in Facebook Messenger, which permitted websites access to the app's 130 crore global users' data, such as who are they chatting with. It was later fixed.
In November, another bug was spotted in Facebook which allowed websites to extract users' data through cross-site frame leakage (CSFL)- a side-channel attack on a user's web browser.