Chennai techie exposes Instagram bug, wins Rs 20 lakh reward by Facebook's security team

Laxman Muthiyah is one happy geek. After all, he just won a super cool bug bounty from Facebook’s security team. The Chennai-base techie has won $30,000 or Rs 20 lakh after he detected a serious bug in Instagram, the popular photo-sharing mobile app. According to an IANS report, Muthiyah detected the bug that allowed him to login Instagram account without consent of the user. "I reported the vulnerability to the Facebook security team and they were unable to reproduce it initially due to lack of information in my report. After a few email and proof of concept video, I could convince them the attack is feasible," teh techie wrote in his blog.

In simple term, this meant that there was a bug in Instagram that could lead to a potential hacking into the account as it allowed the hacker to reset the password without user’s consent. Not only Facebook’s team fixed the bug but also awarded Rs 20 lakh to Muthiyah. This is not the first time that the Chennai-based techie has detected a bug. He had earlier discovered a data deletion bug, the IANS report said.

Meanwhile, Instagram has started hiding "likes" on its platform in Australia, Brazil and several other major markets Thursday, saying it wanted to ease pressure on users, following criticism about its impacts on mental health. The Facebook-owned social media giant's trial changes mean users in the six countries will no longer be able to see the number of likes other people's posts receive. "We want Instagram to be a place where people feel comfortable expressing themselves," Facebook Australia and New Zealand policy director Mia Garlick said in a statement.

Instagram, which has more than one billion users worldwide, is a platform that allows users to post images and videos that others can then like or comment on. But, in the chosen test countries, likes will not be visible on people's profiles, the main image feed or permalink pages.