Facebook pays $13k to 10yr-old hacker

Social media giant Facebook has paid a US$10,000 (A$13,359) reward to a 10-year-old Finnish boy for finding a glitch in its picture sharing app Instagram.

Jani, whose last name was not released for privacy reasons, is the youngest ever recipient of Facebook's bug bounty, paid to researchers who find weaknesses in its platforms.

The vulnerability the child hacker discovered allowed anyone to delete comments on Instagram by planting malicious code into the app.

"I wanted to see if Instagram's comment field could stand malicious code. Turns out it couldn't," Jani told Finland's Iltalehti newspaper.

"I could have deleted anyone's comments from there. Even Justin Bieber's."

Facebook said the glitch was fixed in February and the reward was paid in March.

Jani, who is still too young to have a Facebook or Instagram account of his own, said he learned coding from Youtube videos.

He said he was thinking about a career in IT security, but for now his plans include buying a new bike and a football with his reward money.