The Power of Community
As I mentioned in the video, plugging into the bug bounty community was a massive contributor to my own growth. It's how you can accelerate your learning, stay motivated, and achieve results that are much harder or might be impossible to reach on your own.
This guide breaks down the practical ways you can get involved.
Starting with Passive Learning
The best way to start is by simply listening / scrolling.
You can absorb a huge amount of collective knowledge without pressure - A great first step is to curate your feed on X. This is the community's town square, where top researchers share tools, methodologies, and announce their latest findings, giving you a real-time stream of what's working right now.
Another non-negotiable habit is to read bug bounty write-ups.
When a bug is disclosed, hunters often publish detailed articles explaining exactly how they found and exploited it.
Reading one great write-up is like getting a free masterclass in the thought process behind a successful bug that could spark your curiosity to try exactly the same methodology across your targets of interest.
Moving to Active Collaboration
Once you're comfortable, you can start engaging more directly - the best place for this is in Discord and Slack servers dedicated to bug bounty.
These are where actual collaboration opportunities happen! The next step would be to form small, private groups of like-minded people to hunt together, using each other's best capabilities.
One person might be great at reconnaissance, while another excels at finding deep business logic flaws.
How Teamwork Leads to Critical Wins
Here's a great example from one of my own bounty stories. I was collaborating with a friend on a pretty hardened target by doing deep reconnaissance where we were looking for very old or unknown assets, eventually stumbled upon a PHP server that immediately looked old and out of place
Looking at the application it seemed very likely to be vulnerable to a certain CVE from 2017, but crafting a working exploit required deep PHP knowledge that wasn't my specialty. This is where collaboration comes in - I shared the lead with my friend who is way more experienced than me in these types of tasks, I gave him my findings, and he used his specialized skills to craft a perfect Proof of Concept.
Together, we submitted the report and were awarded a $5,000 bounty for the discovery, which we split 50/50. Neither of us could have found and reported that bug alone.
Where to get Started
Jumping into a community can feel intimidating. Here is a curated list of some of the best places to start learning and engaging.
X / Twitter
Create a dedicated X account for bug bounty and start by following these influential hunters and researchers:
- https://x.com/samwcyo (Sam Curry) – Known for massive findings on companies like Apple and Uber
- https://x.com/iangcarroll (Ian Carroll) – Known for high-impact findings in airlines, travel, and government systems
- https://x.com/rhynorater (Justin Gardner) – Host of Critical Thinking podcast, deep technical insights
- https://x.com/NahamSec (Ben Sadeghipour) – Educator, streamer, and founder of one of the largest bug bounty communities
- https://x.com/Jhaddix (Jason Haddix) – Recon methodology legend, creator of essential wordlists
- https://x.com/galnagli (Gal Nagli) - Myself! sometimes I post cool bug bounty stuff : )
- https://x.com/pdiscoveryio – Project Discovery team, creators of Nuclei and other essential tools
Podcasts to Listen To
- https://www.criticalthinkingpodcast.io/ – Hosted by Justin Gardner and Joel Margolis. The most technical and methodology-focused podcast in the space.
- https://www.youtube.com/@NahamSec – Available on YouTube, featuring interviews with top hunters and live hacking.
- https://open.spotify.com/show/3yUhNMX8Y0Jrji1FPjlYkc – Hosted by Fisher, featuring a wide range of hunter interviews.
- https://darknetdiaries.com/ – Hosted by Jack Rhysider. Not bug bounty specific, but incredible hacking stories that build context and motivation.
Where to Find Bug Bounty Write-ups:
- https://hackerone.com/hacktivity – A live feed of publicly disclosed reports. Filter by severity and program to find gold.
- https://medium.com/tag/bug-bounty – Many hunters post detailed write-ups. Following them on X is the best way to catch these when they drop.
- https://portswigger.net/research – Deep technical research from the creators of Burp Suite.
Discord Communities to Join
- Critical Thinking Discord – For those who want deeper technical discussions.
- NahamSec's Discord – One of the most active communities, great for beginners and collaboration.
- HackerOne's Official Discord – Direct connection to platform updates and other hunters.
- Bugcrowd's Official Discord – Another active platform community.
I hope that by the end of this section you realize that you don't need to master every skill.
Focus on what interests you, get good at it, and leverage the community for everything else.
This is how you'll grow faster than you ever could alone.
In the next chapter, we'll get back to the hands-on work as we start "Building your hacking machine."
Fun Quiz
