Mozilla awards $3,000 to 12-year old bughunter

Posted on Monday, October 25 2010 @ 20:11 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Mercury News reports Alex Miller, a 12-year old boy from San Jose, earned $3,000 by finding a critical security flaw in Mozilla's Firefox browser. The high reward is what motivated Miller to hunt for bugs in Firefox, he claims it took him about 1.5 hours each day for about 10 days until he spotted the critical Firefox vulnerability.
Alex is a bug hunter, but the bugs he's uncovering are unlikely to end up in any entomological reference book. Instead, the bug Alex found was a valid critical security flaw buried in the Firefox web browser. For his discovery, he was rewarded a bug bounty of $3,000 by Mozilla, the parent company of Firefox.

Alex knows the value of bug bounties; he knows what other companies are offering, so when Mozilla upped its bug bounty from $500, he was motivated.

...

He found something in an initial search and sent in a bug report, but it wasn't the right type of bug to qualify for the big bucks. Alex returned to the computer and his exploration. By Alex's estimation he spent about 90 minutes each day for about 10 days until he spotted it--a flaw in the memory of the running program.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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