With the increase of Internet users, tech companies are realising the need for providing a bug-free software experience and hence we hear about bug bounty programs every now and then.
These programs offer huge rewards to encourage ethical hackers and developers to find even the smallest bugs in the program. A similar ethical hacker is a 23-year-old Shivam Vashist from north India.
According to NDTV, Vashist is a full-time ethical hacker associated with San Francisco-based HackerOne which is vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platform with clients like Twitter, Zomato, OnePlus, Starbucks and Instagram.
If you think this is amazing for a 23-year-old, you should also know that by finding bugs, he makes over $125,000 (₹88.94 lakhs approx.) in a year.
In an statement Vashist said,
On average, I am spending about 15 hours a week hacking. However, it varies from time to time, depending on my schedule. Some days, I might be working on something for days continuously, while at other times, I may not be hacking for weeks.
When he was 19, he started learning about the ethical hacking world. His family was a little worried in the beginning but they eventually understood his work and supported him.
Vashist said,
However, they came to understand what I was doing over time, and know that an ethical hacker is completely legal, and a viable career. Since then, they have been very supportive.
He earned his first bounty reward at the age of 20 from InstaCart. The young hacker said,
It was an incredible feeling, I couldn’t believe I did it! The rush it gave me left me sleepless for days.
While many of us, in our early 20s, are getting out of our colleges and trying to find a job, Shivam is already making big bucks.