October 25, 2010

12-year-old earns $3000 in ‘big bounty’ from Mozilla for roping in Firefox security bug

by Shayne Rana

So Mozilla is employing child labor now. Well that’s not entirely true. A 12-year-old from Willow Glen, one Alex Miller from University Prep Academy was paid a cool $3000 by Mozilla because this prodigy found a major security flaw in the Firefox web browser. The money was the form of a reward in actuality. This isn’t the only company that offers what’s been dubbed as ‘Bug Bounty’ to those qualified to try and figure out issues with software. Mozilla just happened to increase the bounty for these hunters and lo and behold, this seventh-grader caught a big one. According to the report young Alex spend about 90 minutes each day for about 10 days hunting this bug that was hiding in the memory of the running program and finally cornered the little bugger and roped in the big bucks. His spent his first $100 on a charity Unconditional Love Animal Rescue and that’s saying a lot about this diligent young man. Go Alex Go!
Mercurynews