Bug Bounty Methodology Version 2025

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Hello everyone I hope you all are doing good and well motivated for 2025 Bug Bounty Journey. First I wish you HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all and I wish everyone get more bounties in 2025. In this blog we will discover the Ideal methodology to follow for bug hunting in 2025. Everyone has their own methodology to hunt on bug bounty targets, but I am sharing a approach which you can follow or modify as per your use so lets get started to hunt bugs and earn reward…

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Table of content:

Selecting ProgramReconnaissanceSorting AssetsLooking for Public CVE’sManual Hunting

1.Selecting a program

Selecting a good program for hunting is a first step you have to do as it can lead to good outcomes. While selecting program you have to keep some points in your mind. The program should have the large scope or a wildcard scope. The program should have the lots of functionalities ass well as it should be user interactive.

2. Reconnaissance

The next part after selecting a program is to start with information gathering. In initial information gathering you should start with the enumerating your target usually start with the subdomains enumeration. For subdomain enumeration you have to use as many as possible enumerating tools. In Reconnaissance your goal should be find a hidden assets or new assets which are not explored by lots of hackers. For Subdomain enumeration I recommend a using SubDomz Script by 0xPugal this script includes most of well known subdomain enumeration tools an by using this you can find more assets.

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3. Sorting Assets

After collecting data about our target next step is to sort a it as per its availability. We have to remove unnecessary assets which are usually not responsive or which are not available right now. We will sort the Subdomains as per its status code for that you can use a Httpx by projectdiscovery or httprobe. For Better Understanding store the subdomains status code wise and then look for issues. e.g. collect all subdomains with 403 and try to bypass 403, for subdomain with 404 look for subdomain takeover.

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4.Looking for Public CVE’s

After sorting assets you should open a one by one subdomains in your browser and look for technologies they are using. For this you can use a wappalyzer extension to detect the technologies and there versions. After detecting the technology you should google and look if there is any CVE available for that technology. Alternatively you can Search on google for hackerone reports releated to that technology. e.g. Suppose you found that subdomain uses Apache Tomcat then you should google “ Hackerone report ApacheTomcat “ or you can also look for medium articles releated that.

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5. Manual Hunting

After all the basic things and searching for public exploits the main part comes which is manual hunting. As everyone says don’t only rely on automation focus on manual hunting more. Manual hunting can give you the vulnerabilities which can leads to rewards. you have to explore each and every functionality on the subdomain by manually. You have to understand what it does and how you can manipulate it. While hunting for the bugs manually it is always recommended to follow and maintain a checklist to test every scenario on the domain. you can create you own checklist or can follow a public checklists like Web application penetration testing checklist by tushar verma this checklist contains more than 200 custom test cases.

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This is just overview about How you should approach your target and what will be your basic steps to look for bugs. Each section of this methodology contais a more subsections. Bug bounty is not a thing which can be done in 3–4 days or weeks for this you need a continouos learning approach. you will get lots of challenges during the process like getting duplicates, NA, Inforamtives But you will have to stay motivated and strong. I will try to write a blog about explaining sections of methodology and explaining a vulnerabilities so make sure to follow me and give clap to this post. Wish you best luck for your Bug Bounty Journey and once again Happy New Year…