Before discovering security flaws in the systems of NASA and the University of Melbourne, Al Hindawi had previously found vulnerabilities in the system of the Al Imam Ashim Islamic Boarding School, where he studies.

Jakarta (Indonesia Window) – Muhammad Al Hindawi, a 12th-grade student at the Al Imam Ashim Islamic Boarding School in Indonesia’s Makassar City, South Sulawesi Province, has discovered and reported security flaws in the systems of NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and the University of Melbourne.

This shows that Islamic boarding school students are not only knowledgeable about religion, Indonesia Window news quoted the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs as saying on its website, Thursday (Sept. 17).

The security flaws discovered were critical vulnerabilities of the SQL Injection type. These findings were reported through the official Vulnerability Disclosure Program (VDP) on the Bugcrowd platform and have been validated by the security teams of the respective institutions.

To date, Al Hindawi is recorded as having discovered two critical security flaws in NASA's systems and one critical security flaw in the University of Melbourne's system.

For his findings, he received a Letter of Recognition (LOR) from NASA and validation confirmation from the University of Melbourne's Cyber ​​Operations team.

Al Hindawi, who began studying cybersecurity auto didactically about four to five months ago, utilized various YouTube tutorials and studied cybersecurity research reports published by other researchers on the Bugcrowd platform.

"When conducting reconnaissance (recon), I initially used subfinder to gather subdomains, then checked their response code status using httpx. From there, I looked for systems vulnerable to SQL injection," Al Hindawi said on Tuesday (Sept. 15).

During the process, he first mapped out the systems targeted for testing. The discovered vulnerabilities were then reported through the official mechanisms provided by each institution.

Prior to discovering security flaws in the systems of NASA and the University of Melbourne, Al Hindawi had also found vulnerabilities in the system of the Al Imam Ashim Islamic Boarding School, where he pursues his education.

The Al-Imam Ashim Islamic Boarding School operates several campuses in Indonesia’s Makassar City and Gowa District, South Sulawesi Province.

For Al Hindawi, this discovery is part of a learning journey he began just a few months ago. He is currently a 12th-grade student and continues to develop his cybersecurity skills auto didactically.

Reporting by Indonesia Window