The Top 8 Bug Hunting Tools for P1 Bug Bounties

TL;DR- The absolute essentials in bug bounty hunting, from beginner level to advanced pen-testing frameworks for P1 bug bounties.

Introduction

Bug bounty hunting is finding vulnerabilities (usually in websites) and then reporting them to their respective companies. Often, these companies will even issue monetary rewards, varying anywhere from $50 to over $2m. It can be a career, hobby, or even just a side income hustle.

Finding these bugs can take weeks or months, so having some great tools at your disposal can be incredibly helpful. They help hunters by locating weaknesses and vulnerabilities in software, web applications, websites, hardware, and infrastructure. Here are 10 great tools that I use for bug hunting →

WebHeckScanner

My personal tool that I coded myself! This tool integrates a bunch of different scripts into a one automated Bash file. A combination of open source repositories with all kinds of functionality, WebHeckScanner utilizes SQLmap, Nuclei, Nikto, and more. I’ve used it to find a ton of high quality bugs, and it’s pretty popular on Github. Take a look here →

Wfuzz

Wfuzz, a Python tool, is used for brute-forcing web apps. It’s very useful for sniffing resources that are not linked such as directories and scripts, POST and GET parameter-checking (for injections), general fuzzing, and tons of other uses. Here are a couple great features →

IronWASP

This open-source web app security scanner is a great tool, and free to use. It’s incredibly powerful for an open-source tool, including a great GUI and helpful functionality for all skill levels. Here are my favorite ‘pros’ after using this tool →

Check it out on IronWasp.org!

Wapiti

Wapiti is a command-line interface tool that helps bug hunters audit web app security. It crawls web applications with black-box scans, searching for any parameters or code where it could inject malicious scripts. When Wapiti is similar to a fuzzer — it finds a list of forms, form inputs, and URLs, injecting payloads to check for scripting vulnerabilities. Notable features →

DNS-Discovery

DNS-Discovery is a great tool for the bug bounty hunters of all skill levels, especially since it’s open source. This tool is a multi-threaded (much faster, and high performance) subdomain brute-forcer that utilizes wordlists. It concatenates strings from wordlists with a domain to search for high-value exposed subdomains. Here’s the link to the tool, and some more information about subdomain enumeration →

Google Dorks

Google Dorking is a solid go-to concept and strategy to use when searching for hidden data and access pages on websites. Google Dorks, a tool that utilizes this concept, relies on the website indexing power of Google to provide useful results in regard to bug bounties. Google Dorks also does a great job with network mapping, and can be a big help in finding valuable subdomains.

Here’s some great information on Google dorking and how to use it for bug hunting →

Vulnerability Lab

The next tool on the list, ‘Vulnerability Lab’, isn’t exactly a tool in itself, but it’s incredibly powerful as a resource. The site discloses numerous high-value vulnerabilities, and creates a phenomenal database for hackers (in particular, bug bounty hunters) to use. It’s a project that provides research, assessments and bug bounties on all sorts of vulnerabilities. Some of the most useful aspects →

Check it out here!

Burp Suite

Easily one of the best, if not the best bug bounty hunting tool. It’s widely recognized as an essential tool in the cybersecurity industry, and so popular that some bug bounty sites (like HackerOne or BugCrowd) have started integrating their web apps with Burp Suite.

Burp Suite is a security-testing platform for web applications, allowing hunters to perform a wide variety of scan types. Whether you’re looking to pen-test a single URL or an entire company domain, this tool can handle anything you throw at it. It can detect over 100 vulnerabilities, and offers a clear and comprehensive presentation. It’s a great piece of hacking software, and I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with it.

Thanks for reading about the best tools in bug hunting! If you’re interested in finding more articles on cybersecurity and bug bounties, check out The Gray Area. If you enjoyed this post, give it a few claps and I’ll be sure to post similar content.

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