Snapchat has a damaged reputation when it comes to security after the recent leak that exposed 4.6 million usernames and numbers.
The photo messaging service would be wise to invest in additional help--and 16-year-old Graham Smith is up for the task.
The high school sophomore, who hails from Dallas, Texas, has been investigating Snapchat security and talking to company co-founder Bobby Murphy, The Daily Beast reported.
Smith, who spent much of the winter rummaging through Snapchat to find potential security flaws, found Murphy's number through the same glitch that resulted in the leak.
"I basically explained that I was your average 16-year-old, but I had found a security flaw and that I was looking to help them," he remembered telling Murphy through text.
The teenager got Murphy's digits by hacking the "Find Friends" feature; "taking the first 8 digits from the database and then plugging in 0-9 in the remaining two spots, he hit upon the co-founder's full number in less than a minute," according to The Daily Beast.
Even though Snapchat recently took measures to keep users' privacy safe, Smith was still able to find ways around security. Snapchat didn't seem thrilled.
"It's hard for anybody to take criticism from a 16-year-old," Smith told The Daily Beast. "That's basically what I was doing: telling you there was a flaw in your product. No one likes that."
The young white-hat hacker found security holes in Snapchat's change to the "Find Friends" feature, which now only lets users find contacts through numbers once an hour. By setting up 25 accounts, Smith could garner some 36,000 numbers a day.
After finding the flaw, he emailed the Snapchat team and was told that the problem would be fixed. When nothing changed, Smith took the matter into his own hands by hunting down Murphy's number and contacting him directly.
The 16-year-old, who hopes to attend Stanford and major in computer science, will keep hunting for flaws in the system to help Snapchat better its security.
"I don't want to be the bad guy," Smith said. "I just want to make sure users are getting the end of the bargain, that their user information is safe."
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