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Bug Bounty Hunting Essentials
Bug Bounty Hunting Essentials

Bug Bounty Hunting Essentials: Quick-paced guide to help white-hat hackers get through bug bounty programs

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Profile Icon Shahmeer Amir Profile Icon Carlos A. Lozano
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€32.99
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.3 (3 Ratings)
Paperback Nov 2018 270 pages 1st Edition
eBook
€17.99 €26.99
Paperback
€32.99
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Renews at €18.99p/m
Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Shahmeer Amir Profile Icon Carlos A. Lozano
Arrow right icon
€32.99
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.3 (3 Ratings)
Paperback Nov 2018 270 pages 1st Edition
eBook
€17.99 €26.99
Paperback
€32.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at €18.99p/m
eBook
€17.99 €26.99
Paperback
€32.99
Subscription
Free Trial
Renews at €18.99p/m

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Bug Bounty Hunting Essentials

How to Write a Bug Bounty Report

Bug bounty reports are your ticket to either top ranks on a platform or the lowest level of humiliation. Good bug bounty reports lead to good relationships with the bug bounty team and better payouts eventually. If the vulnerability report indicates the following signs then your report is indeed a good report:

  • Faster response time from the security team responding to your request
  • Better reputation and relationships with the security team
  • Higher chances of getting a bigger bounty

In this chapter, we will learn about the following topics:

  • Prerequisites of writing a bug bounty report
  • Salient features of a bug bounty report
  • Format of a bug bounty report
  • Writing the title of a report
  • Writing the description of a report
  • Writing the proof of concept of a report
  • Writing the exploitability of a report
  • Writing the impact of a report
  • Writing remediation...

Prerequisites of writing a bug bounty report

Even if you have identified a highly critical vulnerability in the application of a bug bounty program, if the vulnerability report is not clearly written and explained, there are chances that the vulnerability may be rejected by the program. Before writing a bug bounty report, it is crucial that you identify the nature of the program.

 

Referring to the policy of the program

Reading the scope of the bug bounty is probably the most important thing you should do before even looking at the program's website. It will be really frustrating when you spend a week looking for vulnerabilities in a bug bounty program only to find out that the domain that you tested is not included...

Salient features of a bug bounty report

Every bug bounty report is different in terms of its technical details but every report has some features and aspects that are common and generic, which provide extra insights on the vulnerability that was identified. The following are some pointers that you can take into account while writing bug bounty reports.

Clarity

The report should be clear and should not misguide the reader into thinking that the researcher is being pushy. The following is an example of a report that sounds unclear:

"I would like to report a very critical using which you can takeover user accounts and should be fixed ASAP."

However, a clear description may contain the following sentence:

"This...

Format of a bug bounty report

Based on my experience with bug bounties and pen test platforms, I have learned that a well-written report will make a major difference to your success. Over the years, I have developed a clear understanding of how to report flaws in a program and which flaws to report. This has led me to formulate a format for reporting, but this format is not universal and it may vary from person to person and case to case. But, it is something that you can adopt for clear reporting.

Writing title of a report

The report title is the first thing that the program owner looks at and notices about your report. The report title should be explicit and to the point. If the report title has emotional involvement to...

Responding to the queries of the team

At this point, you have submitted the report and the team has seen it. Now, there are two scenarios. If your report is clear and thorough, the team would readily accept it given that the vulnerability exists. However, even if the report is clear the team may still have some questions, which is natural and does not need to diminish your confidence. Here are a few tips on how to respond to the team if they have queries:

  • Always be respectful
  • Never ask them about the resolution or fix timeline
  • Include more technical details with every comment
  • Be thorough in your provision of technical details
  • Have patience, as the team does have other reports
  • Always ask about the bounty after the resolution
  • Accept politely if the team rejects your report
  • If you still think the issue is valid, you can interject

Summary

In this chapter, we learned how to write bug bounty reports including the basic outliners of a bug bounty program scope. We found out about the prerequisites of a bug bounty program and gained an in-depth idea about the scope of a program. We learned what should be included in a bug bounty and what should be the features of the report and its contents. We learned about what should be the format of the report and what it should contain. There were also notes about to how to write different sections of the report and how to respond to the teams post-reporting.

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Key benefits

  • Get well-versed with the fundamentals of Bug Bounty Hunting
  • Hands-on experience on using different tools for bug hunting
  • Learn to write a bug bounty report according to the different vulnerabilities and its analysis

Description

Bug bounty programs are the deals offered by prominent companies where-in any white-hat hacker can find bugs in the applications and they will have a recognition for the same. The number of prominent organizations having this program has increased gradually leading to a lot of opportunity for Ethical Hackers. This book will initially start with introducing you to the concept of Bug Bounty hunting. Then we will dig deeper into concepts of vulnerabilities and analysis such as HTML injection, CRLF injection and so on. Towards the end of the book, we will get hands-on experience working with different tools used for bug hunting and various blogs and communities to be followed. This book will get you started with bug bounty hunting and its fundamentals.

Who is this book for?

This book is targeted towards white-hat hackers, or anyone who wants to understand the concept behind bug bounty hunting and understand this brilliant way of penetration testing. This book does not require any knowledge on bug bounty hunting.

What you will learn

  • Learn the basics of bug bounty hunting
  • Hunt bugs in web applications
  • Hunt bugs in Android applications
  • Analyze the top 300 bug reports
  • Discover bug bounty hunting research methodologies
  • Explore different tools used for Bug Hunting
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Publication date : Nov 30, 2018
Length: 270 pages
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Publication date : Nov 30, 2018
Length: 270 pages
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ISBN-13 : 9781788626897
Category :
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Tools :

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Table of Contents

14 Chapters
Basics of Bug Bounty Hunting Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
How to Write a Bug Bounty Report Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
SQL Injection Vulnerabilities Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Cross-Site Request Forgery Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Application Logic Vulnerabilities Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Cross-Site Scripting Attacks Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
SQL Injection Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Open Redirect Vulnerabilities Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Sub-Domain Takeovers Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
XML External Entity Vulnerability Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Template Injection Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Top Bug Bounty Hunting Tools Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Top Learning Resources Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.3
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4 star 0%
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Ernesto Guevara Gonzaga Jul 08, 2019
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Escencial
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Mohammad Naved Feb 16, 2019
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The book is awesome but is overpriced. It should be around 450-500
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Cliente Amazon Jan 15, 2019
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El título hace pensar que está escrito detallando técnicas modernas con sus razonamientos correspondientes y nada de eso. Da una nociones básicas y muy generales. Cuando quiere ir mas allá simplemente te remite a casos concretos de hackerone.
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