How to get started in Bug Bounty Hunting. A Step-By-Step guide

Starting from “What is Bug Bounty?”

In Bug Bounty Program a Hacker or a Vulnerability finder gets rewarded for finding vulnerabilities in an organization's hardware, firmware, or software.

Why is bug bounty programs important?

Organizations can organize a bug bounty program as a proactive approach so that the bug bounty hunters can find the vulnerabilities in their products. These initiatives help the organizations to look and fix the vulnerabilities before attackers have a chance to exploit them.

How to become a Bug Bounty hunter, or How to get started in Bug Bounties?

Bug Bounties is not a thing that you can just learn in some days or weeks you need to spend time learning web technologies, how a website works(Networking Part), and how to look for vulnerabilities and report them to the organization.

1. Networking

Learning networking concepts is a really helpful thing in bug bounties you’ll get to learn how the internet actually works. Getting the knowledge of networking topics such as IP addresses, TCP/IP stacks, OSI stacks, Mac Addresses, and more. Some useful links where you can learn Networking:

2. A Basic understanding of web languages

Also, you must learn the languages that are used in websites. Having a basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It is not required to master web development but if you can read the code of a website and understand how the website is structured it is super amazing for a beginner. Also having an understanding of protocols like HTTP, TLS, FTP, and more. Following resources can be really helpful in learning basic web languages.

3. Getting knowledge of Web Vulnerabilities and Learning to exploit them.

A website vulnerability refers to a threat or misconfiguration in a website or web application code that permits an attacker to gain some level of control of the website, and maybe even the hosting server. Now as a Bug Hunter it is your job to look for vulnerabilities so you should have a good knowledge of What Vulnerabilities are and How can you find them. Following resources may be useful in learning about vulnerabilties.

Youtube Channels

Books

2. The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws, 2nd Edition

3. Web Hacking 101: How to Make Money Hacking Ethically

Websites

Practice, Practice, Practice, Learn, Learn, Learn!

To do something often enough to improve and keep one’s skills If you want to be a good Bug Hunter, you have to Keep Learning, Practicing and Polishing your skills. Following are some playgrounds for hackers.