Manipur boy Zonel Sougaijam discovers WhatsApp bug, gets awarded by Facebook in return

Guwahati: The north-east region of India is full of possibilities and promising capabilities and proving that once again, A Manipur boy has been able to catch the attention of the world by discovering a WhatsApp Bug. As stated by him and the Facebook, this WhatsApp Bug violates the privacy of a user and the youth, as an acclamation of this discovery, gets awarded by Facebook with a whopping sum of around 3 and a half lakh INR.

The Manipur youth, Zonel Sougaijam, speaking to the media, speaks about how he came to notice the bug and what he did post finding it. As stated by the youth, the bug (technical glitch) came to his notice while he was checking the WhatsApp. On finding the bug, Sougaijam took to report the matter to the Bug Bounty Program of Facebook as this program deals with the violation of privacy matters.

He further states, that “during a voice call through WhatsApp, the bug allows the receiver to turn into a video call without the authorisation and knowledge of the individual making the voice call thereby violating his privacy.” A factor that was not being noticed by anybody so far, has thus, been traced by the Manipur boy who did a good job by informing the Bug Bounty Program of Facebook. Much to his surprise, his discovery got approved by Facebook and not only this, he got acknowledged too. The sum of 347657.50 that he received from Facebook for his discovery hence proves what significant job he has done.

The 22-year-old Manipur youth is currently pursuing his B.Tech from Punjab Technical University. He further added that he got to know about the acknowledgment by the Facebook Security team through Gmail the very next day.

The mail states that the security team transferred the matter into their technical department and the technical department fixed the technical glitch in 15/20 days time. The newly upgraded version of WhatsApp is free from this bug and thus, the personal privacy of WhatsApp user too gets saved from being intruded.

Also read: WhatsApp Discovers Spyware Attack Via Voice Calling