A MAN who hacked into Facebook has been awarded for his efforts.

Jamie Woodruff, 21, was taking part in a hackathon at Southampton University, an event in which computer experts prove their talents.

And Jamie, who is passionate about ethical hacking, was awarded the Certified Penetration Expert title and £1,000 by event sponsors IT Security Experts (ITSE).

There are different types of hacking; the ethical kind, termed ‘white hat’, and the unethical kind, ‘black hat’.

The hackathon was aimed at white hat hacking and, during the event, the Bangor University student hacked Facebook, gaining access to users’ accounts.

Jamie, from Rishton, then informed officials at the company it was possible, and found vulnerabilites in the code of the web applications for Bloomberg and Twitter.

He said: “I felt really excited and happy, and couldn’t wait to show the company how good my skills are.

“I have always said it just takes one person to give me a chance to show my true potential and ITSE gave me that chance.

“It will benefit me teaching people within our society to help them learn how to protect themselves from black hats.”

Jamie is now busy setting up the Ethical Hacking Society at his university.

The society will focus on collecting bounties, where companies pay ethical hackers to find weaknesses in their software code.

The club will use its earnings to attend more hackathons across the country.

It will teach its members basic to more advanced hacking, with all of them bound by an agreement and code of conduct.

And it will attempt to link all universities together by organising a virtual hackathon – something that has never been attempted before.