Indian hacker discovers critical bug in Uber app that allows free rides for life, earns USD 5000

Who will not love a free ride with Uber? However, the ride hailing service may suffer huge losses if the system kept on giving unlimited free rides.

An ethical Bengaluru hacker, Anand Prakash has saved Uber from a massive headache as he revealed a bug in Uber's payment services which could have allowed anyone to take unlimited free rides.

Prakash, who is also a top-ranked hacker for Facebook's bug bounty program, reported the issue via Uber's big bounty program in August 2016 and was rewarded $5000 by Uber.

Anand said that the bug may not have been easily replicated by common users, but with a little knowledge of technicalities and coding, one could have availed free rides. Upon getting permission from Uber, Anand disclosed the bug that would have allowed invalid payment method after a ride. He displayed the flaw in the service app both in US and India.

The bug was immediately fixed by Uber and Prakash disclosed the bug in his blog, only after he received approval from the company to do so.

This is not the first such achievement of Prakash. The ethical hacker has also been rewarded by companies like Facebook, Twitter, Adobe  and Google among others. He has earlier received a cash prize of $15000 from Facebook for finding a bug in the Facebook's password system.