Become a Bug Bounty hunter: Unveiling the Secrets to Success!

This guide from me is for beginners and also those who are already struggling in bug hunting. Follow this roadmap of mine and you will get better at bug hunting. Maybe you can come to the leaderboard also Because I share advanced methodology too step by step.

Starting with portswigger web security academy (They’re the author of the web application hacker’s handbook 2).

our first step is learn every bug class by topic deeply & take a verbose note, after then

2. Learn Code obfuscation & Deobfuscation (Just Google it what is obfuscation/deobfuscation)

3. Learn evasion basics & Filter Evasion and WAF Bypassing techniques.

After this is done you should know about web attack vectors also known as threat modelling. (Go to these links you will get the idea).

Let’s deep dive into a bit more advanced level?

Start reading this book OWASP Code Review Guide & practice on OWASP Securing Coding Dojo (for code review) learn to spot bugs quickly with SAST Tools by watching code, going sources to sink.

Why I’m telling you to learn this is because all the researchers you see on the leaderboard quickly extract the front-end and backend code, then spot the code’s weaknesses and probe & exploit that endpoint.

You can use: CodeQL, Semgrep, SpotBugs & SonarQube, Find Security Bugs for Static code analysis. Use whichever one feels best fit for you.

Now it’s make your very own pen-testing methodology that you will not share with anyone. The methodology you see on the internet (publicly available) is being seen by 100’s of other people just like you who are into bug hunting.

If you follow that, you will also get duplicates and info, because ultimately, You are applying the same tools and methodology.

additionally, I am sharing my methodology, which may help you:

1. For Information Gathering i use OWASP Amass

2. i used to finding & extract subdomain using burp intruder

3. For fuzzing Burp / clusterfuzz & Restler

4. For code analysis I used sonarQube , codeQL , Semgrep (i personally prefer SonarQube)

5. For decompilation: webpack-exploder , wabt , asar , hbctool

6. Additionally for Dynamic i used : clusterfuzzlite & Jaeles

7. For Web Testing: BurpSuite

Reverse-engineering (dynamic and static) is a highly underrated skill in bug bounty. That no one will suggest you.

Whenever you are stuck Just Go here:

And if you want to move forward and Learn about API Pen-testing : (Check-out this link)

Now why should you follow my roadmap?
Like you all I started from 0 and got no guidance. I find out all by myself which one is the best fit for me and that is shared with you.

And later took these certificates : OWSE , GCPN , eMAPT
OSEP (in progress)

This roadmap is enough to make you a successful Bug Bounty Hunter alongside an AppSec Engineer.

I am moving away from AppSec x Bug Hunting completely so thought I would share these information which will really help you.