My name is Sirat, I'm from Kurdistan, and I'm 25 years old. I spend most of my time hunting bugs on the HackerOne platform.

After seeing how many of you connected with my previous stories and found them genuinely useful, I wanted keep sharing. My goal is simple, the more I share, the more we all grow eo expect more stories, more breakdowns, and more real-world insights into bug bounty and pentesting.

In today's story, I'll walk you through why you should commit to one program or company, how to approach it the right way, most importantly, how to keep finding vulnerabilities across their assets for as long as you stay focused on them.

I hope this resonates with you, and I hope you walk away with something valuable you can apply right away.

Why hackers stick to a program? Why you should?

Have you ever thought that spending months or even years on one target sounds boring or like a waste of time? That's a fair assumption, But trust me, it's the opposite.

Every hacker has their own reasons for sticking to one program, For me personally, it means I always have a target to test new techniques and vulnerabilities on, I continuously learn new attack vectors, and I develop a deep understanding of how that application actually works, which makes hunting on similar targets much easier down the road.

For beginners, I won't lie, the beginning is the hardest part, It can feel slow, repetitive, and discouraging, But once you start understanding your target, everything changes, It begins to feel like a puzzle you're genuinely obsessed with cracking, Every vulnerability you find gives you a rush that keeps pulling you back for more, That feeling is what pushes you to go deeper, think harder, and eventually uncover bugs that nobody else even thought to look for.

That's where the real growth happens and that's why sticking to one target is one of the best decisions you can make as a bug hunter.

First, Find the target you like to Hack

After reading this, you're probably already browsing HackerOne looking for your next main target but before you do, there are a few important things you need to know first.

We all know that hunting can be either exciting or exhausting, and a big part of that comes down to the target itself. Hunting on a program you genuinely enjoy feels completely different from forcing yourself through one you don't care about.

When I chose Slack as my main target, I didn't really choose it, it chose me. At the time, I was getting really good at finding vulnerabilities related to user invite functions, and I wanted to explore that same area in Slack, But over time I realized Slack was a great fit for me, not just because I was finding bugs there, but because it kept teaching me new things and had features I genuinely enjoyed testing.

A common approach is to pick apps you already use in your daily life such as TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and so on, That's not a bad instinct, But my recommendation is to go a step further and choose programs that have functions you're already familiar with, and that pay well, That way, even finding one bug a month can still be worth your time financially.

One last thing, and this is especially for beginners, I strongly don't recommend starting with high-reputation programs that attract thousands of experienced hunters, like GitHub, GitLab, or Slack. The competition is fierce, the low-hanging fruit is long gone, and it can kill your motivation before you even get started.

Selected the target, What now???

Once you've chosen your target, don't overwhelm yourself right away. In the first week, approach it just like any regular pentest explore the surface, get comfortable, and let things flow naturally. By the end of that week, most of the core functions will already feel familiar to you, That's when the real work begins.

From that point on, don't limit yourself to just testing OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities or chasing XSS, Instead, shift your focus toward truly understanding your target. Learn how the application is built, what technologies it uses, and what it actually does.

And when I say learn it, I don't mean recon. Use it like a real user would, Log in, explore every feature, click every button, and think about how everything connects, This mindset is what leads to business logic vulnerabilities and hidden functionality that nobody else has ever touched, because most hunters never slow down enough to actually understand what they're testing.

That said, recon still has its place, but go beyond the basics. Don't just run your tools and move on, Set up monitoring for your target so you're always the first to know about new features, new subdomains, and new IP ranges. New attack surface is fresh attack surface, and being early means being ahead of everyone else.

Recommended things to always HACK your Target

Many hunters believe that knowing a wide range of hacking techniques is what leads to more findings, And while knowledge matters, it means very little without deep information about your target. Technique without context rarely gets you far.

Based on my own experience, I approach programs by narrowing my scope, not the whole application at once, but one single function at a time. I test each feature individually, and through that process I end up understanding those functions better than the developers who built them.

Even after I've gone through everything, I restart the entire process, it never feels boring. What makes it exciting is combining what I now know about a current feature with everything I previously learned about another. That's where the interesting connections start to appear, connections that lead to vulnerabilities nobody else thought to look for.

If you have a programming background, make use of it. Read the JavaScript files, understand how requests are structured, and if you have web development experience, try to figure out how the application was built. That knowledge gives you a serious edge.

One last and very important point, don't stop at one vulnerability. When you find a weak spot, keep pulling at that thread. If you find an RCE through a file upload function, don't move on, stay there, because there's a good chance SSRF is hiding nearby. If you find an access control issue in a function, that same function likely has several other vulnerabilities waiting to be uncovered. A weak function is rarely weak in just one way.

Tips & Tricks

Before I wrap up, here are some practical tips from my own experience that I think will make a real difference for you.

If you're feeling burnt out, step away — but don't just quit. Take a break from the target for a while, but use that time to reflect on what's making it feel boring and fix it. Maybe you're testing the same things over and over, Maybe you need to learn something new. Identify the problem and come back stronger.

Read your target's documentation. This is something most hunters skip, and it's a huge mistake. Documentation tells you which functions are the most sensitive, how features are supposed to behave, and often hints at where things can go wrong. You can even use AI to help you search through you'r target docs for specific keywords or behaviors you're interested in.

Pay attention to what the security team actually cares about. Don't just submit reports blindly. Over time, observe what they prioritize, what they reward, and what they tend to ignore. Understanding their mindset helps you focus your energy on findings that actually matter to them which means better responses, better payouts, and a better relationship with the program.

Take notes. Always. Every time you test something, every time an idea crosses your mind, every time you find something even something that seems minor, write it down. Notes connect dots, Something you tested three weeks ago might be the missing piece to a critical vulnerability you're looking at today.

Thank you very much, I hope you all find the story useful. https://x.com/siratsami71