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What Is Bug Bounty Hunting?
Bug bounty programs are deals offered by prominent organizations, websites, companies, or software developers, to the white-hat hackers to reward them for finding bugs in their application. There is a significant increase in the number of organizations with such programs, it opens numerous opportunities for ethical hackers, who are looking forward to opting for Bug Bounty Hunting as a Profession.
Vendors will reward bounties when bug hunters find flaws and vulnerabilities in systems, web applications, and firmware, etc
Ethical hackers can make Bug Bounty Hunting a profession so that they can earn money in the process of doing so
Whether it’s a small or a large organization, an external audit, or simulation of real-world hackers to assess the security posture of systems, networks, and applications of the organization is needed.
That’s why organizations approach bug bounty programs and reward ethical bug hunters
A vulnerability rewards program (VRP) also known as Bug Bounty Hunting is a crowdsourced mechanism that allows the company to reward hackers individually, for their work.
Bug Bounty programs are an essential procedure to facilitate security audits and vulnerability assessments to ensure the security of a company’s information.
Bug bounty hunters occupy a wide range of skills that they use to test applications of different vendors and expose security loopholes in them. Then they produce vulnerability reports and send them to the company that owns the program to fix those flaws quickly. This is called “responsible disclosure”. If the report is accepted by the company the bug hunter gets paid.
How to become a Bug Bounty Hunter?
The most interesting part about Bug Bounty Hunter is that there is no necessity to have a certification or qualification for reporting Bugs. But having an authentic certification is always advantageous.
Bug Bounty Hunter must go through the architecture of applications and security issues in applications.
Bug Bounty Hunting is a profession that is highest paid, and skills are the necessary tools for these jobs.
Knowing about web application technologies and mobile application technologies are critical for a Bug Bounty Hunter.
Bug Bounty can be practised by starting with limited scope, comparatively smaller applications. It will reduce your stress and pressure and will help to increase your skills and confidence level gradually
There are a few methods which help to develop skill in Bug Bounty Hunting.
- Obtain basic knowledge from renowned sources such as training institutions and online sources and books
- Reading books
There is a lot of books available in the market to help you learn basic knowledge about the fundamentals of penetration and Bug bounty Hunting
Practising what you learned
Perfect practice is what makes you perfect. It’s important to understand and retain what you learn.
Susceptible applications and systems are great
ways to test your skill set in a virtual environment. This will also provide you with a calculation of what you are going to contribute to the real world.
Learn from Reports
- H1 nobbed
- Facebook’s disclosure blog
- Jack Whitton’s blog
- Frans Rosen’s blog
- Rafay Baloch’s blog
These are a few resources that would be beneficial for learning more about Bug bounty hunting.
It will help to understand the possibilities and chances of success in this profession. It is a reference to Learn how Bug Bounty works and so on.
Learning together – learn and network with others
Hacking is a long journey of learning. It’s important to maintain passion and curiosity in this field. It might take years of effort to get what you are searching for. But you can’t get depressed or lose passion. Building a group of people who are interested in this area of knowledge can help you to survive the boredom while doing Bug Bounty Hunting.
Bug Bounty Hunting as a profession
According to statistics companies pay more for bugs with high severity than normal ones. For a single bug report, Facebook has paid up to 20,000 USD.
Google has a collective reward of paying 700,000 USD to researchers who reported vulnerabilities. In 2016, Apple also announced a reward of up to 200,000 USD for finding flaws in iOS components, like remote execution with kernel privileges or unauthorized iCloud access. So you can imagine the scope of this profession.
These statistics clear your doubts about what is bug bounty hunting and its scope as a profession. So, go and learn for the best earnings.
