Boyolali Primary School Student Receives NASA Award After Discovering Security Vulnerability

Ibrahim Al Abrar, a sixth-grade primary school student from Boyolali, Central Java, has achieved international recognition after discovering a vulnerability on a website belonging to the United States space agency, NASA. For his finding, the student known by the username ‘Ibracoding’ received an official Letter of Recognition from NASA in July 2026.

The proud news was first shared by Ibrahim via his personal account on 13 July 2026. The achievement marks an initial step for Ibrahim towards realising his ambition of becoming a cybersecurity professional. His journey in the digital world began self-taught, starting with learning to code on a mobile phone before eventually using a laptop.

The vulnerability discovered by Ibrahim was categorised as Broken Link Hijacking. This flaw allows inactive links on an official website to be redirected by irresponsible parties to another site. If exploited, the gap risks being used for fraud or phishing by directing users to fake pages impersonating official institutions. Ibrahim submitted his report through Bugcrowd, the platform used by NASA for its Vulnerability Disclosure Policy (VDP) programme. Although initially rejected several times for being considered similar to findings by other researchers, Ibrahim’s report was eventually validated and recognised as a finding that met the criteria of NASA’s security programme.

The technical skills Ibrahim possesses were acquired through a self-directed learning process. He utilised video tutorials and was active in online communities, starting from when he was still using a smartphone. His perseverance in studying programming enabled him to identify security gaps in international-scale systems such as NASA. In the award letter signed by NASA Senior Agency Information Security Officer Kelvin Taylor, the agency expressed its deep appreciation. NASA assessed that Ibrahim’s contribution was very helpful in identifying previously unknown vulnerabilities, while also safeguarding the integrity of the agency’s information.

‘Your reporting has facilitated NASA’s awareness of otherwise unknown vulnerabilities and helped us protect the integrity and availability of NASA information,’ Kelvin Taylor wrote in the letter. This award was given to Ibrahim because he was deemed to have complied with responsible reporting guidelines. This achievement adds to the long list of young Indonesian talents recognised globally in the fields of information technology and cybersecurity.