San Francisco Aug 15 (IANS) Google has rewarded an Uruguayan school student $10 000 after he exposed a security flaw which hackers could have used to access sensitive data.
Ezequiel Pereira wrote in a blog post that one day he was bored and so he tried to find a bug on Google.
After several failed attempts he found one internal webpage that did not require a username or any other information to access The Telegraph reported on Monday.
"It had many links to different sections about Google services and infrastructure but before I visited any section I read something in the footer: Google Confidential " the student wrote in a blog post in July.
"At that point I stopped poking at the website and reported the issue right away " he added.
Google s security team replied saying they were looking into the issue.
"I thought to myself Cool this is probably a small thing that isn t worth a dime the website probably had some technical stuff about Google servers and nothing really important " he recalled.
"I don t know what the website did contain but some weeks later I got an email right after getting out of school that said my report was worth much more than a dime."
Google later paid him $10 000 and fixed the bug.
Google runs a Vulnerability Reward Programme (VRP) offering monetary rewards to reporters who flag bugs.
Earlier this year Google increased the bounty for finding a bug in its proprietary Android OS to as much as $2 00 000.
--IANS
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