An Austrian hacker discovered a Google vulnerability and received a reward of 80,000 euros

An Austrian hacker, Köck, discovered a serious vulnerability in the “Google for Developers” developer platform and received a €80,000 reward, the largest sum he has earned so far for identifying a computer security issue.

The vulnerability allowed session cookies to be manipulated to bypass the authentication process and execute custom code. According to the publication Heute, cybercriminals could have exploited the flaw to gain access to internal systems and sensitive data.

Köck immediately reported the issue to Google, and the company is said to have fixed it within one to two days. He received the reward several weeks later as part of the vulnerability identification and reporting program.

The Austrian has been programming since he was 13 and currently works as an ethical hacker. He deliberately searches for vulnerabilities and reports them to companies so they can be fixed. Köck claims that he previously identified 15 security issues in the information systems of the city of Vienna. He says that programming experience is important, but luck also plays a role in discovering such errors.