Meet 20-year-old ‘white hat’ from Jaipur
For example, I found a major security loophole in the website of recently occurred literature festival in Jaipur. So, I reported the security bug and helped them in securing their online payment portal RAGHAV SHARMA, ethical hacker
JAIPUR: Amid the threat from hackers, who are round-theclock trying to break into computer systems worldwide and cause as much damage as possible, Raghav Sharma, a 20-year-old white hat (ethical hacker), comes as a man Friday.
Born in Churu district and brought up in Jaipur, the bug bounty hunter finds security loopholes in websites and online applications, reports them to the concerned authority and gets paid handsomely for his endeavours. He has drawn praise from various government organisations and big business firms for his bug bounty programmes.
“A bug bounty program, also called a vulnerability rewards program (VRP), is a crowd sourcing initiative that rewards individuals for discovering and reporting software bugs,” he explains.
Raghav claims that he uses the vulnerability not to exploit for his personal use, but informs organisations and helps them to secure from financial disasters. “For example, I found a major security loophole in the website of recently occurred literature festival in Jaipur. So, I reported the security bug and helped them in securing their online payment portal,” he adds.
With his bug-hunting skills, Raghav had pointed out serious loopholes in many Indian embassy websites. To add to his credit, a week before the assembly elections in Rajasthan, Raghav had also found a serious ‘client-side injection’ in the website of election commission of Rajasthan and secured it.
National Informatics Center (NIC), a premier science and technology organisation of the central government and National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Center (NCIIPC), a nodal agency of the centre, have acknowledged Raghav’s services. NCIIPC has put his name in its newsletter’s ‘hall of fame’ and has got appreciation letter from the government of the Netherlands for finding out a bug in the government’s website and securing it with a solution.
However, Raghav is worried about the future of cyber security experts in the country. He says on one hand India is ushering in the digital sector and focusing on safer cyber world, on the other, the white hats within the country are not taken seriously. “If you find a bug in another country, the country appreciates you, but in India the bounty hunters are threatened with legal actions,” he adds.
Raghav’s father Dr Subhash Sharma is an administrative officer and his mother is a homemaker. He is doing his B Tech in Computer Science with specialisation in data science from Bengaluru.
His father Dr Subhash Sharma says, “The computer was something Raghav was attracted towards since childhood. When kids of his age were busy merging up elementary mathematical formulas, he would crave for laptops and computers.”
On why he opted to become a white hat, Raghav says, “When Wikileaks occurred, I decided to channelise all my enthusiasm and efforts towards making the online world safer. It’s less about technology and more about religion for me.”
Raghav’s future objectives include starting a cyber security company and start a blog to groom aspiring young ethical hackers.