A teenager from Uruguay, Ezequiel Pereira, has been recently granted with a reward worth $36,000 for finding a bug by Google. The bug or the defect that Pereira found was related to security and it would have enabled the attacker to do modifications to the inner systems of the organization.

Pereira, who got his hands on a computer at the age of 10, has been learning to the programme since the age of 11. He has been submitting bugs and earning rewards under the bug bounty program of Google since he was almost 17. Although the current bug is his fifth bug approved by Google, it is the most profitable one with a whopping reward of $36,337.

Pereira stated that he had come across some particular defect almost instantaneously, which could have carried a reward of $500 and that felt really motivating for him, so he was determined to keep continuing since then. He also added that he is very happy that he came across a defect that was so crucial. Notably, he came across this bug in the initial part of 2018 but wasn’t at the liberty to mention the same till the current week, after receiving a confirmation from Google that they have resolved the bug.

Pereira is a student of computer engineering at a college in his native city, Montevideo. His second most important bug was found by him July last year, during a school break, for which he was rewarded with $10,000. This money was used by him to make applications for 20 or so universities in the US, but without any success, after which he started his college in his native.

The amount to be paid to a bug hunter is decided by Google on if the bug is capable of providing the attacker with direct access to a system and on the severity.