Manipur Youth Rewarded with Rs. 3 Lakh for Pointing out WhatsApp Bug

Imphal, June 10, 2019:

Zonel Sougaijam, a young man from Imphal East of Manipur, was recognized by the mega-billion dollar mammoth organization Facebook for discovering and reporting a WhatsApp bug.

Zonel was rewarded with 5000 United States Dollars (which is about Rs 3.4 lakh) by the social media giants. He has also been inducted in the Facebook Hall of Fame page 2019 for his contribution.

Zonel, who is 22 years old, is a Bachelor of Technology graduate from Punjab Technical University.

According to report, Zonel discovered a WhatsApp bug through which a WhatsApp voice call can be upgraded to video call without the authorization of the other user, which presented a security issue for Whatsapp users.

The bug bounty program for Facebook is a program where you can report potentially critical bugs which challenges the privacy of its users. The social media giant awards the person concerned with money if they identify the reported bug to be critical.

Manipur boy Zonel reported the bug to Facebook through its 'bug bounty programme' where one can inform about bugs which pose security threat to Facebook-related products.

He currently stands 16 in a list of 94 people in the ‘Facebook Hall of Fame List’ for this year.

It may be mentioned that in February 2014, Facebook purchased the messaging service WhatsApp for $19 billion. The acquisition price was staggering for an app that made little money and was largely popular outside the United States.

During the time of acquisition, the CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg had said: "WhatsApp will complement our existing chat and messaging services to provide new tools for our community."

It may be mentioned that WhatsApp is one of the most popular chatting apps in India.

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