Facebook has never been considered a safe haven. Exploits have always been present, and on multiple occasions, hackers have used these exploits to their advantage.

One particular exploit of hacking into someone else’s page was well-documented back in 2011 and got everyone’s attention. Letting this issue roam free would have been a huge problem, something that people at Facebook realized that and hence fixed the issue in a matter of days. Seeing how bad these issues can get, the social networking giant started a bounty program where it began rewarding people for discovering and reporting bugs to the company. This program has been working rather well as Facebook has managed to avoid major security embarrassments since then.

Even recently, it dodged a bullet as an Indian stumbled upon a bug that could allow an attacker to take control of any Facebook business page.

Security Flaw in Facebook Pages Resurfaces

Page hacking bug that led to the inception of the bounty program back in 2011 is back once again. However, it won’t be as big of a threat this time because the person who discovered the exploit reported it to Facebook before any damage could be done.

The social networking giant was well aware of the problems that arose due to this issue last time, and was quick to get rid of it this time around.

The guy who discovered this exploit is Arun S. Kumar, a 20-year-old computer engineering student from India, who is currently studying at the MES Institute of Technology and Management.

When people get their hands on such bug, they tend to take the wrong route and exploit them. However, Kumar doesn’t want to go down that road as he knows how much havoc hackers and wreak.

In a statement to a local news site, he explained, “Since the hacker would be able to manipulate the page of any Facebook user, the damage it would bring is beyond imagination.”

A Worthy Reward for a Facebook Hero

Facebook has been rewarding people for discovering and reporting security exploits on their platform, and it wasn’t any different this time around. Kumar received his monetary reward of $16,000, but the tech giant didn’t stop there as it also gave recognition to the young student.

All of this will certainly benefit him. However, Kumar doesn’t seem to be doing this all for the money or the glory, and it certainly wasn’t his first heroics. Last time around, he helped Google, and before that, he helped identify a less threatening bug in Facebook as well.

Facebook and its users sure are fortunate to have Kumar watching after them as this young lad has certainly played a major part in preventing a digital catastrophe of massive proportions.