19-year-old Kerala boy gets name included in Facebook Hall of Fame for fixing bug

19-year-old KS Ananthakrishnan from Pathanamthitta, Kerala has been honoured by Facebook by including his name in its prestigious Hall of Fame for pointing out a fatal bug in the Facebook owned, WhatsApp application. The bug that was detected could potentially allow any other person to remove all files from the victim’s account without his knowledge.

KS Ananthakrishnan is a second year B-tech student at Mount Zion College of Engineering with special interest in the field of Information Security and ethical hacking. He stated that he found two bugs in the application and reported I to Facebook in the month of March, Facebook after observing the boy’s suggestion for about two months then decided to award the boy for his help.

He received a price money of $500, roughly 34,000 INR, alongside the inclusion of his name on their “Hall of Fame”. The “Hall of Fame” is a list of people who made notable discoveries on the working of Facebook applications and disclosed it to the company to make appropriate changes. The 2019 Hall of Fame so far includes 94 people out of a billion users of the Facebook apps.

In his free time, Ananthakrishnan dedicates himself to the Kerala Police’s “Cyberdome” which is a technological research and development center focusing on cyber security and cybercrimes. Apart from that, his keen interest in ethical hacking keeps him occupied with polishing his skills over the internet.  

This is not the first time that KS Ananthakrishnan’s skills have been recognized, a year and a half ago, he reported a bug on Google applications, while his discovery was not substantial enough to get his name on their hall of fame but he did get an honourable mention.

The 19-year-old stated that he had an affinity towards the field for a long time but only decided to pursue it as a career when he was in the 12th standard once he started exploring what the domain had to offer.

While Facebook has time and again been criticized for its security, or lack thereof, changes to the applications hasn’t won user’s trust yet. After the out of proportion scandal on data sharing, stealing user information and side channels to extract files, Facebook has been working hard to regain an image of reliability and dependability. Until they do so, we must rely on young heroes like KS Ananthakrishnan who make our web-surfing just a little safer and secure.

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