Level 5 Student Prajwal Acharya Listed in Digital Flanders Hall of Fame

Kupandole Lalitpur. The Westminster College is proud to announce that Prajwal Acharya, also known as ikab, a Level 5 student of BSc (Hons) Cyber Security and Forensics, has received Hall of Fame recognition for his contribution to cyber security research.

Prajwal’s first-ever vulnerability report has been officially accepted, earning him a place in the Digital Flanders Vulnerability Disclosure Program Hall of Fame on the YesWeHack platform. This recognition highlights his responsible approach to identifying and reporting security vulnerabilities.

The vulnerability discovered by Prajwal was identified as a Path Traversal vulnerability with Web Application Firewall (WAF) bypass and information disclosure. Such vulnerabilities occur when an application does not properly validate file paths, allowing attackers to manipulate path parameters (for example, using sequences like “../”) to access files and directories outside the intended location on a server. In certain cases, attackers may bypass security protections such as a Web Application Firewall through encoding or other techniques, enabling malicious requests to reach the backend system. This can potentially expose sensitive information including system files, configuration details, server paths, or internal error messages.

Prajwal responsibly reported the vulnerability through the official disclosure programme, where it was validated and assigned a severity rating of 7.5 (High).

This achievement marks an important milestone in Prajwal’s journey in cyber security, particularly in the fields of responsible disclosure and bug bounty research. His accomplishment reflects the practical skills and curiosity encouraged within the Cyber Security and Forensics programme at The Westminster College.

The Westminster College congratulates Prajwal on this remarkable recognition and looks forward to seeing his continued growth and contributions in the field of cyber security.