Bihar,
local boy has claimed to have discovered a possible bug in Google which the search engine thinks may have successfully attacked its security by hackers and needs to be fixed. Rituraj Choudhary, a second-year student of IIIT-Manipur, claimed that as an “enthusiastic bug hunter”, he reported the potential vulnerability to the company, which acknowledged the threat and placed him on the researchers’ list.
Rituraj shared a link with this newspaper – bughunters.google.com – which mentions the “Tiger” award category in his profile. He also shared the contents of an email that talks about Google’s “vulnerability rewards program” for software researchers to identify bugs and report them to fix the problem.
In cybersecurity parlance, a bug is classified on a P0 scale. When a bug is discovered, it is classified. It takes a bug hunter to move it to the P0 level , which means complete vulnerability. The relevant organization asks bug hunters to report these steps, so that they can fix the flaws,” Rituraj said, adding that in his case, he measured the level of threat as P2 on the scale. successfully taken.
“The flaws could be enough to allow hackers to break into and access the data and compromise the privacy associated with it,” he said, adding that Google acknowledged the bug and was in the process of fixing it. Is.
“While I’m still working on the problem, the company appreciated my service and offered me a spot on its list of researchers,” he said. Rituraj said that he would be entitled to monetary benefits from the company, if he is successful in bringing it to the P0 level.
The engineering student said that he has a passion for bug hunting since a young age. “I was attracted to this field when I was in high school and wanted to go to Israel or Germany for my specialization after BTech as both the countries are considered as the ‘Mecca’ of cyber security education,” he said.
Rituraj’s father Rakesh Kumar Chaudhary runs a jewelery shop in the main town here while his mother Sunita Jaiswal is a housewife. Rakesh said that Rituraj was very skeptical about his son’s passion.
