Recently, a 14-year-old made an interesting discovery on Apple‘s proprietary videotelephony device, FaceTime. He discovered that you might include yourself to a Group FaceTime call and force recipients to answer immediately. To induce this, the user starts a FaceTime video call with a contact, then while the call is “ringing,” they add themselves to the call as a third party by tapping “Add Person” and entering their own smartphone number. If properly performed, a Group FaceTime call is started and the native recipient’s audio begins to stream before the call is accepted.
This discovery has now earned the teenager identified as Grant Thompson a recognition and reward from Apple. The technology giant has confirmed that it will be advertising the family with compensation for finding the bug as part of its bug bounty reward program. The teenager will also obtain a scholarship for his education which is very a gift from Apple. With no quantity was stated but if the compensation is part of the company’s Bug Bounty program, the number could be anywhere between $25,000 and $200,000.
Apple was at initial slow to acknowledge the bug whenever Thompson’s mother Michelle attempted to warn Apple about the exploit a week before it became important news. The company was prompted to acknowledge the issue and the discovery after several tweets about the issue. The function was temporarily disabled but the bug has currently been fixed in the newest iOS 12.1.4 and macOS Mojave updates. The release note for the new iOS 12.1.4 variant includes an acknowledgement of the discovery, crediting Grant alongside an additional individual identified as Draven Morris.