How I Found My First Bug in Bug Bounty

Yes believe me your first real bug is probably closer than you think. Not a boring textbook example or some artificial lab challenge, but a genuine vulnerability on a live bug bounty program that was in scope, safe to test, and ultimately acknowledged by the security team. In this article, I'll walk you through exactly how I found mine, how I verified and reported it, and why this approach is one of the best ways for beginners to land their first valid finding.

I still remember the moment I found my first real bug. After months of grinding, learning, and coming up empty-handed, I finally uncovered a genuine vulnerability.

This is the first time I'm sharing a bit about the beginning of my bug bounty journey. It's a story of persistence, frustration, and finally, success.

Starting Out: From Graduation to Bug Bounty

Right after graduating with my Bachelor's degree, I started applying for junior cybersecurity and penetration testing roles. But instead of spending all my time refreshing job boards and waiting for replies, I decided to keep sharpening my skills in the real world. Since I already had some exposure to bug bounty hunting, it felt like the perfect opportunity to continue exploring it while I searched for my first job.

I wasn't starting from zero. During university, I had studied cybersecurity and spent countless hours reading security blogs, watching tutorials, experimenting in labs, and keeping up with the latest industry trends. Through all of that, I had already become familiar with bug bounty platforms like HackerOne and Bugcrowd.

Of course, I also knew what I was getting into. These platforms were packed with experienced hunters, and the competition was intense. Thousands of skilled researchers were testing the same targets every day. Still, I figured there was no better place to learn than by jumping in myself. So, I picked one of the major platforms and started hunting to see how the whole process worked from the inside.

Learning process : Building My Own Methodology

When I first started, I wasn't hunting for bugs I was hunting for a process. I spent countless hours trying to understand how successful bug bounty hunters actually worked. I read write-ups, watched conference talks, followed experienced researchers, and took notes on almost everything I came across.I paid close attention to:

. The tools they relied on

. Their reconnaissance workflows

. The way they approached manual testing and Their automation setups

. How they structured and wrote vulnerability reports

So over time, I realized that no two top hunters worked exactly the same way. Everyone had their own style and workflow. So instead of copying one person, I combined the techniques that made the most sense to me and built my own hybrid methodology a balance between automation for coverage and manual testing for deeper analysis.

Then came the hard part: actually finding something.

For so months, I hunted consistently. I scanned targets, mapped applications, tested features, and repeated the same process day after day. Despite all the effort, I had nothing to show for it. No accepted reports. No bounties. Not even a low-severity finding.

It was frustrating. Imagine pouring your time and energy into something every single day, making it your main focus, and going months without a single success. There were moments when I wondered if I was missing something or if bug bounty hunting just wasn't for me.

But looking back now, those months of "failure" weren't wasted at all. They were quietly building the foundation that eventually led me to my first real bug.

Why the Background Matters

I know I've spent a bit of time talking about my background, but I think it's an important part of the story. The truth is, success in bug bounty hunting rarely comes down to luck or natural talent alone. It's often the result of all the small experiences and lessons you've accumulated along the way And when I say "background," I'm not just talking about formal education or having a cyber security degree. I mean the combination of things that shape the way you think and solve problems:

• The knowledge you've picked up over time
• The hands-on experience you've gained, even from failures
• Your mindset and willingness to stay curious
• Your ability to adapt, learn, and keep going when things don't work out

Everyone starts from a different place. What matters isn't where you begin it's how you build on what you already know and use every experience to improve.

Looking back, I realize that everything I had learned before finding my first bug the university courses, the endless articles, the late-night tutorials, and even the months of unsuccessful hunting was quietly preparing me for that moment.

The Fun Part: Finding My First Bug

After months of frustration, the first paid bug I found was, unexpectedly, an Access Control Bypass exposing an internal monitoring information including live infrastructure metrics.

At that point, I had lost all hope of finding any bug after hundreds of failed attempts. it felt almost impossible to find any basic vulnerability in their systems.

The funny thing about this bug is that I wasn't doing anything particularly advanced. I wasn't using expensive tools or some secret technique that only experienced hunters know. I was simply paying attention to how the application responded and asking myself, "What happens if I change this?"

During my reconnaissance phase, I came across an interesting endpoint:

https://cache-graphicslib.target.com/monitoring

When I opened it in my browser, I was greeted with a familiar message: 403 Forbidden. Most beginners see a 403 response and immediately move on to the next target. I used to do the same thing. But over time, I learned that a 403 doesn't always mean "game over." Sometimes it just means, "Try looking at this from a different angle."

So instead of giving up, I started making small, harmless modifications to the URL. One of the simplest tricks I had seen in write-ups was to play with the path structure by adding extra slashes. It's easy to test, takes only a few seconds, and occasionally reveals inconsistent server-side filtering.

I changed the URL to:

https://cache-graphicslib.target.com//monitoring//

And then something unexpected happened.

Instead of another 403 Forbidden, the server responded with a 200 OK and displayed a live HAProxy Statistics dashboard. At first, I thought it might be a mistake or some kind of cached page, so I started verifying what I was seeing.

As I explored a bit further, I remembered that HAProxy statistics pages often support exporting data in CSV format. So I appended a common export parameter to the URL:

https://cache-graphicslib.target.com//monitoring//?stats;csv

This time, the application returned a CSV file containing live production monitoring data without requiring any authentication.

At that point, I knew I had found something real.

But before getting too excited, I wanted to make sure this wasn't limited to a single endpoint. During reconnaissance, I had noticed another path that looked similar:

/monitoring_exch1_small

Testing the normal endpoint it returned the same 403 Forbidden response:

So I repeated the exact same trick and to my suprise it worked

Once again, the restriction was bypassed, and another HAProxy monitoring interface was exposed this time with a different process ID, suggesting that multiple production instances were accessible.

Final Thoughts: The First Bug is Just the Beginning

Looking back, the most valuable part of this experience wasn't the double-slash bypass itself it was the lesson behind it. I didn't find my first bug because I had some secret payload or an advanced toolkit that nobody else knew about. I found it because I was curious enough to question the application's behavior instead of accepting the first response it gave me.

That's something I think every beginner should keep in mind. A 403 Forbidden page isn't always a dead end. Sometimes it's an opportunity to slow down, think differently, and ask yourself, "What happens if I try one small variation?" Whether it's changing the URL structure, testing a different HTTP method, or looking at the application from another angle, those tiny experiments can lead to unexpected discoveries.

For me, one simple tweak adding a couple of extra slashes to a URL turned months of unsuccessful hunting into my very first valid bug report. And that's why I believe persistence matters so much in bug bounty hunting. The breakthrough often comes right after the moment when you feel like you've run out of ideas.

Like & drop a comment if you found this helpful, I hope to bring more stories like this in the future.

Stay tuned and happy hacking