In a tweet announcing this, the company said that it independently verified the students acted responsibly before providing support.

The story of four computer science students made the headlines yesterday after Times of Malta published an article about what had happened late last year.

The UOM students are being investigated by the police after they found and highlighted a security weakness in the student application, ‘FreeHour.’

Allegedly, Giorgio Grigolo, Michael Debono, Luke Bjorn Scerri and Luke Collins were scanning through the software of the app when they found a vulnerability they say could be exploited by malicious hackers.

Dedaub, who hired two of the boys and is covering all legal fees, is a leading company in the smart contract security and auditing space, providing solutions to address security problems. The company’s founders and auditors have a strong academic research background combined with real-world hacking experience to secure code.

Dedaub’s expertise in program analysis, reverse engineering, DeFi exploits, and cryptography has attracted prominent customers such as the Ethereum Foundation and Chainlink. Their foundational analysis tools and deep expertise have made them a go-to company for securing code.

The company has performed over 100 audits for leading DeFi protocols and has even white-hat hacked prominent protocols with billions in TVL. They specialise in complex economic attacks and are the first to identify these issues.

Times of Malta reported that the students emailed their findings to FreeHour and asked for a reward for spotting the mistake. The University of Malta students were later arrested, strip-searched and had their computer equipment seized.

Reacting to the news, FreeHour’s Founder and CEO Zach Ciappara posted a video on Instagram addressing what he referred to as “misleading headlines regarding the students under investigation over security vulnerability on the FreeHour App.”

#MaltaDaily