Mozilla pays 12-year-old San Jose boy for hunting bugs in system

[ronjor]

-{ Quote: "By Anne Ward Ernst
Silicon Valley Community Newspapers Correspondent


It's safe to say a typical Willow Glen 12-year-old doesn't earn $3,000 for a couple of weeks' worth of work. Then again, Alex Miller is no typical 12-year-old.

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." }-http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_16401891

[CloneRanger]

Good for him, clever kid :thumb:

-{ Quote: "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." }-

So $500 is just pocket money to kids these days ;D

[SIR****TMG]

nice reward.:thumb:

[tobacco]

They should have the kid start work on eliminating the memory leaks which they don't seem able to do ::)

[Boyfriend]

Good reward for 12-year-old San Jose boy http://www.wilderssecurity.com/images/smilies/thumbsup.gif

[DasFox]

Well what does this say about Mozilla, the fact that it took a 12 year old 10 tries at 90 mins. a pop and finds a problem like this... :wacko:

All I can say is it's not making FireFox look good...

I've personally been sick of Firefox's memory leaks that have been going on for years.

I've been playing with the latest Opera it runs damm smooth compared to Firefox but that thing sucks the ram too.

When are these developers going to realize that more then half the world is still using 5-10 year old computers with very little ram.

To me I see no one addressing the issue of memory consumption with a small footprint other then K-Meleon.

It's time the developers wake up and start producing lighter versions besides the bloated versions, for the rest of the world.

[firzen771]

-{ Quote: "Well what does this say about Mozilla, the fact that it took a 12 year old 10 tries at 90 mins. a pop and finds a problem like this... :wacko:

All I can say is it's not making FireFox look good...

I've personally been sick of Firefox's memory leaks that have been going on for years.

I've been playing with the latest Opera it runs damm smooth compared to Firefox but that thing sucks the ram too.

When are these developers going to realize that more then half the world is still using 5-10 year old computers with very little ram.

To me I see no one addressing the issue of memory consumption with a small footprint other then K-Meleon.

It's time the developers wake up and start producing lighter versions besides the bloated versions, for the rest of the world." }-

who says the 12 year old doesnt understand computers well enuff to find these bugs? im sure most 12 years today know more about computers than most 40 year olds. i dont personally think age means much within reason, i look at competence and im sure if Opera or chrome was offering a bounty like this to find bugs, it wuld be the same thing the other way around

[Osaban]

-{ Quote: "who says the 12 year old doesnt understand computers well enuff to find these bugs? im sure most 12 years today know more about computers than most 40 year olds. i dont personally think age means much within reason, i look at competence and im sure if Opera or chrome was offering a bounty like this to find bugs, it wuld be the same thing the other way around" }-

'Google Chrome Can’t Be Hacked' for $10,000

http://topnews.us/content/216139-google-chrome-can-t-be-hacked

[DasFox]

-{ Quote: "who says the 12 year old doesnt understand computers well enuff to find these bugs? im sure most 12 years today know more about computers than most 40 year olds. i dont personally think age means much within reason, i look at competence and im sure if Opera or chrome was offering a bounty like this to find bugs, it wuld be the same thing the other way around" }-


To say, 'im sure most 12 years today know more about computers than most 40 year olds', that sounds like the typical general technology statement about how most kids are smarter then adults on computers over the general population, with you putting your own twist on it saying 12 years vs 40 years old, and this is hardly the case here you missed.

We're talking about a 12 year that can find what other geeks can't, we're not talking about a 12 year old geek vs a 40 year old truck driver.

So to say there are 12 year old coders that know more then most 40 year old coders, well I doubt that, but you didn't say this, you generalized it.

If you'd of read about this boy you'd realize that Mozilla can't even do what he's doing.

So this is what I meant when I said it took at 12 year old to whip Mozilla's ass, LOL. Still being a 12 year old geek and whipping the whole development team at Mozilla, crap we're not talking about some Susy's Home course in fudge brownie making, Mozilla has some pretty serious development Gurus that Jr. whipped, LOL...

So geeks vs geeks, yea this was pretty amazing for a 12 year old to own Mozilla... ;)