Demystifying Bug Bounty Hunting

By Ashhad Mazhar

11/23/2023

I remember getting overwhelmed by the sheer number of opinions out there about bug bounties when I was just starting to learn. There was so much information and so many conflicting opinions that I spent a lot of my time trying to filter useful information from all the fluff on the internet. That time could have been spent actually learning something.

My aim with this article is to provide you a clear picture of bug bounty hunting and share my experiences so far in hopes that it can help simplify the topic for you.

Full disclosure, I am a beginner myself and I don’t claim to be an expert in bug hunting. I’ll link some resources by actual experts at the end of the article to help you get started.

What is a Bug Bounty?

Let’s start with the basics. A bug bounty is a reward given to a hacker by an organization for finding vulnerabilities in their products. Companies set up bug bounty programs to allow hackers to legally hack into their targets.

The hackers try and exploit any weaknesses they can find in the target systems. Once they do find a bug, they report it to the company’s bug bounty program and the company rewards the hacker depending upon how severe the bug is. The reward could be anything from cash, swag or reputation points on the program to a mention on the organization’s hall of fame.

This blog post by freeCodeCamp is a good introduction to the topic.

Is bug bounty an easy way to get rich?

The answer is a hard no. Bug bounty hunting requires a lot of hard work, consistency and, most importantly, patience. You won’t start finding bugs after a couple of weeks if you are completely new to the field. Heck, I am still trying to find a valid bug after spending more than 2 months of dedicated study. This is not to deter you from pursuing bug bounties, but I am simply letting you know that you should be ready for a lot of hard work and patience.

Is bug hunting only reserved for experienced hackers?

Is it impossible for a beginner to enter this field? Are there no bugs left for beginners who don’t have their own automated scanning tools set up?

The answer is again no. It is still possible to break into bug bounties and people are proving it again and again. Simply go to any bug bounty hunting discord server and you will find many new people getting their first valid bugs. It will simply require a lot more patience as compared to other fields, but it is still doable.

Find your why

Make sure you have a good reason for starting bug bounties. Let’s take myself as an example. I am pretty interested in backend web development nowadays. One of my many reasons for learning bug hunting is that it will force me to have a much deeper understanding of how web applications work under the hood while making me some side income as well. In this way, bug hunting will be a perfect supplement for my web development learnings. Your reasons might be different but make sure you do have some solid ones.

Don’t jump in for the wrong reasons

Your primary reason for starting bug hunting should be that you genuinely find it interesting. Not because you think it will get you some “easy money” or it sounds “cool”. The reason is that it will probably take a lot more time to succeed than you might think, and you will keep going if you have a genuine interest in the field. Otherwise, you will quickly lose patience once the “hacking sounds so cool” phase ends and you’ll end up wasting valuable time that you could have spent learning some other skill you are actually interested in.

Final words

My best advice would be to not waste too much time “researching” about bug bounties as I did. Instead, get a baseline understanding of bug hunting, find a good enough path and just get started. Stick with that path, be consistent and don’t lose patience.

Helpful Resources to Get You Started:

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