Apple to reward teenager who discovered Group FaceTime bug

Cupertino based giant Apple is currently dealing with the problematic bug that was discovered on its Group FaceTime. A few days back it was reported that a 14 year old high school student Grant Thompson from Tuscan, Arizona, was the one who discovered the bug. The company has said that it will pay the teen who discovered the bug two weeks back while setting up a group chat with friends playing Fortnite. The bug had allowed the users to listen on someone before they answered the call.

The teen’s mother Michele Thompson while talking to a leading daily had said that her son had repeatedly tried to contact Apple about the issue with the help of emails and social media but to no avail. Apple got in touch with her two weeks back after the news of the bug went viral on the internet. By that point, the company had taken down the Group FaceTime feature. Apple has issued a fix for the problem just a few hours back in its iOS 12.1.4 security update.

The release has notes for the patch credit Thompson along with another individual who has been identified as Deven Morris from Arlington, Texas. Apple has assured that it will compensate the family of Thompson and provide an additional gift towards the education of the teenager. The details of the award or the prize money has not been released but Apple offers up to $200,000 in cash bounties as a part of its bug bounty program.

The initiative was formally launched as an industry norm in 2016 and had reportedly invited a batch of security researchers to take part in it. 19 year old Luca Todesco, was hailed as the first person to jailbreak the iPhone 7 and was among the ones who received a call. Earlier in the same year, the social network had paid $10,000 bounty to a ten year old Finnish kid who had figured out a way to delete other users comments for the Instagram servers.

Photo Credits: ABC News