Best job ever? Aussie teen paid thousands to hack tech giants

HE'S only just finished high school but this NSW teen isn't flipping burgers for a living - he has tech giants such as Google and Apple paying him thousands to hack into their systems.

He's not your typical teenager.

Griffin Francis, a 19-year-old from Coffs Harbour on the New South Wales north coast, hasn't got a full time job but has earned thousands hacking into tech giants Google, Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft and Adobe, then tipping them off about flaws in their security systems.

"I think of what they haven't done and about finding means to bypass that," said Mr Francis, who is studying a diploma in information technology. 

"Let's say a site has a vulnerability and the administrators patched against it. I could think of flaws with the way they patch against that and try to get around it."

"[Or] security flaws that possibly compromise user data, stuff that shouldn't be there. Let's say your logged in to a website, the data is stored on their site and you tamper with the website to replicate them being logged in, stuff like that."

Mr Francis started experimenting online two years ago and now uses a super computer he built himself after his school lap top "wasn't quite cutting it."

He is one of a growing community of "white hat" hackers who are handsomely rewarded by tech giants for exposing flaws in their systems and reporting them.

Google runs a Vulnerability Reward Program that provides rewards ranging from $100 to $20,000 and a spot in their Hall of Fame to anyone reporting bugs that "substantially affects the confidentiality or integrity of user data," on sites like Youtube, Google and Blogger.

The company also put up $3 million in reward money for hackers to find vulnerabilities in Google Chrome earlier this year.

"It's not just Google. [Other companies] offer a program on their sites where you can ethically report security flaws and other issues, and some sights give you a cash incentive or acknowledge you online," Mr Francis said.

It comes amid Cyber Security Week, where research shows Australians have an average of 12 password protected accounts, although two out of three people don't change their passwords as often as they should.

Mr Francis said he will use his experience as a stepping stone, and hopes to get a job as a security engineer at Google in future.

"There's a lot of requests for it online as well. People wanting their sites pure, not compromised by people as well," he said.