Tips for a Successful Bug-bounty Hunter

Are passionate about hunting software errors and glitches? Do you want to earn enough from your bug hunting capabilities? This one’s for you then. An organization needs special team members who can be able to hunt as many software defects as possible in order to strengthen its software products and applications. For this purpose, organizations head over to hire bug bounty hunters to join their quality assurance teams. 

But wait for a second, what are bug bounty hunters? 

A bug bounty hunter is a hacker that is being hired by an organization to detect all the possible vulnerabilities, loopholes, errors, and glitches in the software product. These hackers are paid according to their capabilities of hunting more and more bugs. 

If you are planning to kickstart your career as a bug bounty hunter or want to be more successful in it, then follow the following tips for your growth as a bug bounty hunter;

Submit valuable and easy-to-understand errors – Quality, not quantity. Executing remote code on a production system is much more valuable than using self XSS, even if they are all security issues. Enjoy the thrill of super-serious mistakes brought by hunting. In addition, successful hackers spend a lot of time describing the problem as clearly as possible. Straightforward, don’t incur unnecessary (reading) expenses for the company (too much corpus will also reduce the responsiveness of the company you are reporting to). In the end, successful hunters read the program policy before starting to look for loopholes.

Proficiency in using defect tracking tools – Successful hunters are only those who are aware of or have an in-depth understanding of the use of various defect tracking tools. Defect tracking tools are best at assisting humans in hunting, investigating more and more bugs while enabling other team members to provide proper fixtures to the defects. 

Do your homework for being successful – If you are not satisfied with the basic knowledge, please rest assured. It is recommended to have a good understanding of IP, TCP, and HTTP and other protocols and take some (network) programming courses. Most bug bounty programs focus on web applications. To become a successful bug bounty hunter, gather as much knowledge as possible from various channels and through several mediums including, social media, online articles, and blogs, electronic books, gathering certifications from different sources, and enrolling in different relevant courses. This way, it is guaranteed that you’ll be able to prove a successful bug bounty hunter. 

Final Thoughts

Since software development and software testing are the most crucial industries. For being successful as a tester or as a bug bounty hunter, one has to continuously update his knowledge base and must be able to have a strong grip on the new and trendy techniques and technologies. Competition is no doubt intense but to cope up with the competition is the only ability that makes an organization stands out. And to cope up with the competition, organizations heavily rely upon their quality assurance personnel and resources.