How I'd Get Into Bug Bounty Hunting: A Practical Guide
Here's an honest strategy that you can use to get started with bug bounty hunting, which doesn't take months or years to achieve success.
If I wanted to get started with bug bounty hunting, here's what I'd do:
First, I would study the following topics in this exact order:
Then, after gaining a theoretical understanding of HTTP, DNS, common protocols, popular web application infrastructure, and how a website or web application typically works, I would head to this detailed PortSwigger resource and choose one vulnerability type.
I would study it thoroughly and learn everything about the vulnerability type that I can.
How it works
What makes something vulnerable
How developers can patch it
Real-world reports involving it
Different methods to detect it
After that, I would start to read up on methodology that can be used to find the vulnerability type.
An easy way to test if you know enough about it is to try and explain it to someone in great detail.
At this point, some might suggest joining a public bug bounty program. However, this is one of the worst pieces of advice for beginners.
Instead, use the responsible disclosure model.
Go to a bug bounty platform like Open Bug Bounty and start reporting vulnerabilities.
Some people might call this bad practice, but I submitted over 5,000 vulnerabilities this way over 36 months without receiving a single negative response.
If you're not comfortable with this approach, search for less popular bug bounty programs using Google dorks.
There’s a whole list of them available. You get my point, feel free to change the wording to try and uncover programs that don’t have a lot of active hunters.
As a final piece of advice, avoid hunting on platforms like HackerOne, BugCrowd, and Intigriti when you first begin.
Most of the public programs they offer are challenging even for experienced bug bounty hunters. You’re going to get demotivated quite quickly.
Pivot to them eventually, but not when you first start out.