Instagram was acquired by Facebook in April 2012 for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock.
Christian Lopez Martin, a freelance security researcher, wrote on a blog post on Monday about how he was able to hack Instagram through the platform's web version in a way that would allow outsiders to gather users' private photos. Users who only used the mobile app would not have been at risk.
He brought this matter to the attention of facebook's White Hat program , which promises to reward upto $500 USD on severity of the problem. The bug remained in the app for six months after Martin brought it to the company's attention, according to Forbes, although most of the issues were resolved a month after Martin's alert.
A spokesperson said in a statement given to Mashable that "We applaud the security researcher who brought this bug to our attention for responsibly reporting the bug to our parent company Facebook's White Hat Program,".
Adding with this they told "We worked with the team to make sure we understood the full scope of the bug, which allowed us to fix it. Due to the responsible reporting of this issue to us, we do not have evidence of account compromise using this bug. We have provided a bounty to the researcher to thank them for their contribution to Instagram Security."
But Martin told forbes in an interview that "That dollar amount may be even higher based on the "severity and creativity of the bug.
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