Malta’s top white hackers, who were charged with hacking a popular student app called FreeHour, but later pardoned on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, have now been awarded a $20,000 prize from the Security Legal Defense Fund Awards. You can find the press release by the SRLDF here. The students are Michael Debono, Giorgio Grigolo, and Luke Bjorn Scerri.
The Security Research Legal Defense Fund (SRLDF) is a US-based nonprofit organisation dedicated to supporting good-faith security researchers who face legal threats or lawsuits stemming from their work in vulnerability discovery and disclosure. Instead of offering direct legal representation, SRLDF provides financial grants to help researchers secure legal counsel when needed—a crucial safeguard for public-interest cybersecurity efforts.
In 2023, the students, alongside their lecturer Mark Joseph Vella, discovered a public vulnerability in the app of FreeHour and notified its owners about it. After identifying the issue, the students sent a standard email, commonly used in cases of public vulnerability disclosures, informing the company about the flaw. In the same email, they proposed payment for their work and suggested that the company fix the vulnerability before it was made public. The vulnerability involved a serious deficiency that could have led to students’ personal data being leaked. FreeHour reacted by reporting the white hackers to the police and the students were subsequently charged with criminal offences.
Public outcry eventually convinced the government that this was not a criminal case and the students were awarded a Presidential Pardon.
Local authorities responded with an excessively punitive approach toward the students. Despite winning the national Cyber Security Challenge, they were told to keep quite about it. The Cyber Security Challenge in 2023 was cancelled and the winning students were prevented from participating at the European Cybersecurity Challenge.
The award will not only help the endeavors of the students, but will also help establish more recognition for the work and status of Malta’s white hackers.
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