A 20-year-old computer engineering student's alertness might have saved Facebook for us, the way we knew it.
Arun S Kumar from Kollam in Kerala discovered a bug on Facebook which reportedly had the potential to bring down Facebook. The youth was awarded a cash prize of $ 10,000 (around Rs 6.6 lakh) from Facebook for identifying the flaw.
Arun identified the malfunction named Full Account Takeover, which allows anyone easy trespass into other peoples Facebook accounts without their knowledge or approval.
“It was during one of my usual searches that I found lookaside.facebook.com. Probing further, I found that the domain is affected by a malfunction named Full Account Takeover, in which a hacker could easily trespass into any Facebook account without the knowledge or approval of the owner in less than 10 minutes" Arun said.
He identified the error in March this year and reported immediately to Facebook authorities. "Though I identified this bug in March, at first the Facebook authorities were reluctant to accept the flaw. After several intimations, they responded and fixed the problem,” said Arun.
This is not the first time that Arun has identified a bug. In the past he had spotted many varieties of bugs on Google and Facebook. Facebook has put his name in its Hall of Fame last year, appreciating his efforts to make social networking secure.
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