Khalil Shreateh is already well-known in the tech world for hacking Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page, leaving the message:

Dear Mark Zuckerberg,

First sorry for breaking your privacy and post to your wall , i has no other choice to make after all the reports I sent to Facebook team .

My name is KHALIL, from Palestine…

This was after he'd attempted to notify Facebook's white hat team about the bug. (Shreateh provides a full account at his site, and it's widely corroborated, although Facebook denies Shreateh followed the proper channels, citing an "absence of detail.") Shreateh, who at times worked construction 12 hours a day during his 10-year bid to complete a B.A. in Information Systems at Al-Quds Open University (an institution proposed by the PLO in the 1970s), learned English by reading chat boards. It's all the more impressive considering his conditions:

The West Bank is no easy place to be a hacker, or to do anything in the technology sphere. The occupied region depends on Israel for electricity, water and telecommunications, including the sluggish Internet that crawls into the South Hebron Hills. Shreateh has a well and three water tanks on his roof because Yatta only receives several days of running water every few months. Blackouts are common, and the town often goes without electricity for whole days in the winter.

Facebook, it might not surprise you, did not acknowledge the bug, and therefore did not compensate Shreateh, which is customary. That's when fans across the world started a crowdfunding effort that netted Shreateh $13,000. He's using the money to launch a cybersecurity service with which internet concerns can "request 'ethical hacking' to identify their vulnerabilities."

But Shreateh's outlook on ethical hacking is one of the coolest things about this story. He tells Wired:

“There is no security today. No one is secure,” Shreateh says. That’s why people need ethical hackers to protect systems against the nonstop threat of security vulnerabilities and the black-hat hackers who exploit others for fame and money. There’s a moment of truth when you decide to take the white hat path, Shreateh says, a fork in the road when any hacker discovers a bug and decides to publicize it or get it closed instead of exploiting it for personal gain.

“I think, if someone hacks and takes my money, how do I feel?” Shreateh asks. “You treat people how you want them to treat you.”

Go read the whole thing and feel good about humanity for a minute or two.