Google paid a hacker $5,000 for finding a bug that let him delete any video on YouTube

A Russian security researcher discovered a flaw in YouTube that allowed anyone to delete any video uploaded to the site, The Register reports.

Kamil Hismatullin was searching for security vulnerabilities in YouTube in order to try and win one of the cash rewards that Google hands out to researchers. 

Hismatullin found that it was easy to fool YouTube into deleting any video on its system. He was looking through the code for managing livestreams, and discovered a simple option to wipe any video from YouTube.

Here's a video from Hismatullin that explains what he found:

"I've fought the urge to clean up Bieber's channel," Hismatullin said. "Luckily no Bieber videos were harmed." He reported the issue to Google, and the company fixed the problem within several hours. Hismatullin was also given $5,000 for finding the problem.