A Jaipur-based teenage student named Neeraj Sharma, has recently helped Instagram by saving the app from being hacked leading to misuse of data. According to the information received from the news agencies, Neeraj found a bug in Instagram which could easily lead to changing of thumbnails in any Instagram user account without them logging in and out of their account.
Neeraj has been awarded an amount of Rs 38 lakh by Meta owned Instagram for saving data of crores of users social media accounts from being hacked.
After Neeraj found and shared the bug with the company, Instagram and Facebook did a thorough check and found it authentic, he was rewarded hi for his great work.
According to Neeraj, “There was a bug in Facbook’s Instagram, through which the thumbnail of the reel could have been changed from any account. All it required was the media ID of the account to change it no matter how strong the password of the account holder is.
“In December last year, I started finding fault with my Instagram account. After a lot of hard work, on the morning of January 31, I came to know about the (bug) mistake of Instagram. After this, I sent a report to Facebook about this mistake on Instagram at night and received a reply from them after three days. It asked me to share a demo,” he said.
Neeraj who is a young 19 year old man showed Instagram in 5 minutes by changing the thumbnail. After seeing it, Instagram immediately approved his report and sent Neeraj a mail in which they ito acknowledge him and also informed him that he has been given a reward of $ 45,000 (about Rs 35 lakh in INR). Also due to the delay at the company end Facebook also gave $ 4500 (about Rs 3 lakh) as a bonus.
