Source: George Rose / Getty
Young Ezequiel Pereira is out here living his best life.
After teaching himself computer programming, 17-year-old Pereira was able to do something most can’t—find a security bug in Google’s AppEngine server. Pereira, a high school student from Montevideo, Uruguay, was able to access part of the internal AppEngine Google infrastructure without being authenticated. Apparently he came across the security issue while on break from school…because, fun.
He told ABC News he was “really bored at home” during his winter vacation, adding “Luckily that day I had the idea to do the trial and error that led to the [discovery].” The rest is history.
For being such a champ, Google awarded Pereira $10,000. The high schooler found out via email and said his “reaction was really calm. I’m a really calm person. I just thought, ‘Great,’ and called my mother to let her know.”
He also told the site, “The thing I love of computers is that they are capable of doing everything if you give them enough resources and you know how to tell them to do anything. Homework is boring. Looking for bugs is fun.”
Pereira says he will save the $10K and hopes to attend college in the United States. See the letter he received from Google here.
