security-bounty-hunter

Security Bounty Hunter

Use this when the goal is practical vulnerability discovery for responsible disclosure or bounty submission, not a broad best-practices review.

When to Use

• Scanning a repository for exploitable vulnerabilities
• Preparing a Huntr, HackerOne, or similar bounty submission
• Triage where the question is "does this actually pay?" rather than "is this theoretically unsafe?"

How It Works

Bias toward remotely reachable, user-controlled attack paths and throw away patterns that platforms routinely reject as informative or out of scope.

In-Scope Patterns

These are the kinds of issues that consistently matter:

Pattern	CWE	Typical impact
SSRF through user-controlled URLs	CWE-918	internal network access, cloud metadata theft
Auth bypass in middleware or API guards	CWE-287	unauthorized account or data access
Remote deserialization or upload-to-RCE paths	CWE-502	code execution
SQL injection in reachable endpoints	CWE-89	data exfiltration, auth bypass, data destruction
Command injection in request handlers	CWE-78	code execution
Path traversal in file-serving paths	CWE-22	arbitrary file read or write
Auto-triggered XSS	CWE-79	session theft, admin compromise

Skip These

These are usually low-signal or out of bounty scope unless the program says otherwise:

• Local-only pickle.loads, torch.load, or equivalent with no remote path
• eval() or exec() in CLI-only tooling
• shell=True on fully hardcoded commands
• Missing security headers by themselves
• Generic rate-limiting complaints without exploit impact
• Self-XSS requiring the victim to paste code manually
• CI/CD injection that is not part of the target program scope
• Demo, example, or test-only code

Workflow

1. Check scope first: program rules, SECURITY.md, disclosure channel, and exclusions.
2. Find real entrypoints: HTTP handlers, uploads, background jobs, webhooks, parsers, and integration endpoints.
3. Run static tooling where it helps, but treat it as triage input only.
4. Read the real code path end to end.
5. Prove user control reaches a meaningful sink.
6. Confirm exploitability and impact with the smallest safe PoC possible.
7. Check for duplicates before drafting a report.

Example Triage Loop

semgrep --config=auto --severity=ERROR --severity=WARNING --json

Then manually filter:

• drop tests, demos, fixtures, vendored code
• drop local-only or non-reachable paths
• keep only findings with a clear network or user-controlled route

Report Structure

## Description
[What the vulnerability is and why it matters]

## Vulnerable Code
[File path, line range, and a small snippet]

## Proof of Concept
[Minimal working request or script]

## Impact
[What the attacker can achieve]

## Affected Version
[Version, commit, or deployment target tested]

Quality Gate

Before submitting:

• The code path is reachable from a real user or network boundary
• The input is genuinely user-controlled
• The sink is meaningful and exploitable
• The PoC works
• The issue is not already covered by an advisory, CVE, or open ticket
• The target is actually in scope for the bounty program