Vaishnav NK, a 23-year-old hailing from Kerala’s Kannur district, has earned a place in Google’s Hall of Fame after pointing out a minor flaw with Google. Vaishnav brought to attention that content could be posted via backdoors using false identification information, which would allow people to post such information and content without authorisation.
“Since thousands of people try hard to get into the revered space by finding out the holes in the system, it is considered a big achievement and it gives me immense satisfaction,” Vaishnav told TNIE.
The 23-year-old native of Pallur near Mahe, who studied BTech in Puducherry, was interested in ethical hacking from the time he was in college and would dedicate hours in front of the computer to learn the same.
One’s position of the Hall of Fame page is determined by the seriousness of the issue. The positions do keep changing. Vaishnav currently is listed on page seven, though he was earlier on page three of the Hall of Fame.
Google’s Hall of Fame is dedicated to those individuals who have contributed to making Google products safer and features over 1,000 people. Earlier, in July 2017, Athul Jayaram, an engineering student from Noida’s Amity University and a native of Kollam in Kerala, was awarded this honour for discovering a bug in its password system.
In December 2017, Sreenath Sasikumar, another techie hailing from Kerala, was also awarded a position on Google’s Hall of Fame after discovering and identifying a major security flaw in the system. The Kozhikode native is one of many security research analysts working to secure these programs.
In addition to Google, tech giants such as Microsoft and Facebook also undertake similar recognition programs such as ‘Bug Bounty’ which rewards people who come forward and point out flaws in security and encourage them to keep all applications secure.