The air in my apartment was stale, recycled through a window unit that rattled like a dying chainsaw every time the compressor kicked in. It was 3:00 AM. My eyes felt like they had been rubbed with sandpaper, yet I was more awake than I had been in weeks. On my monitor, a line of text glowed back at me in a monospaced font. It was not an error message, nor was it a standard HTTP 200 OK response. It was something that, by all laws of logic and web development, should not have been there.

I had just found my first critical vulnerability.

The Script Kiddie Phase

Before I get into the technical weeds of how a sleep deprived novice cracked a target that was way above his pay grade, we need to rewind. We need to talk about the mindset of someone who is new to the game but desperate to prove they belong. When I started, I was what the old salts in the IRC channels would charitably call a "script kiddie." I had the Kali Linux wallpaper, I had the terminal with green text on a black background, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

I was throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping that the firewall would slip on a carb and let me through. I was running tools like Nmap and Nikto without understanding the output, looking for open ports on servers that didn't care, and essentially making a lot of noise. I was the digital equivalent of a burglar throwing bricks at windows while wearing a neon sign that said "I am here."

This approach, as you might imagine, yielded exactly zero dollars. It was frustrating. I spent weeks reading writeups on HackerOne, watching YouTube videos of people claiming to make five figures a month while eating cereal in their underwear. I saw the payouts. I saw the glory. But I could not bridge the gap between their success and my failure.

The Mindset Shift

The turning point came when I realized that hacking is not about magic. It is not about being a wizard who types faster than the speed of light. It is about observation. It is about understanding how systems are supposed to work so that you can identify exactly how they are failing to work that way. If you're stuck in the same trap I was, thinking AI tools or automated scanners are going to save you, you're probably making the same mistake most people make about security in the age of LLMs. Real hacking is about logic, not magic.

I decided to pick a target. Not Google. Not Microsoft. I needed something smaller, a "Wildcard" program on a platform like HackerOne or Bugcrowd. These are often private programs or public programs that are overlooked because they do not have the flashy brand recognition of the tech giants. I found a startup in the fintech space. They had a bug bounty program, but the traffic on their disclosure page was low. The signal to noise ratio was favorable.

The Recon That Actually Worked

I started my reconnaissance, or recon, the right way this time. Instead of blasting port scanners, I started looking at the surface. I looked at their JavaScript files. I looked at their subdomains. I treated the web application like a puzzle I needed to solve before I could break it.

I was playing with their mobile application API. I intercepted the traffic using a proxy, something every hunter needs to learn how to do on day one. I saw a request that grabbed user profile data. It looked something like GET /api/v1/users/profile.

Being the curious type, I decided to see what would happen if I changed that ID at the end. I sent the request to Repeater, a tool inside Burp Suite that lets you modify and resend web requests. I changed the ID to 1. The response came back with data for a generic admin account. Then I changed it to 2. Then to 3. Nothing happened.

My heart sank. I thought maybe I was seeing cached data or generic templates. I tried to force an IDOR, or Insecure Direct Object Reference. This is a classic vulnerability where an application exposes a reference to an internal implementation object, such as a file, directory, or database key, without any other access control checks.

I spent hours tweaking the headers. I added X-Forwarded-For: 127.0.0.1 hoping to trick the server into thinking I was internal. I tried adding User-Agent: Googlebot. Nothing worked. The access controls were actually decent.

The Debug Header That Changed Everything

Then, I noticed something weird. One of the endpoints I was looking at was for a "beta" feature they were rolling out. It was a referral system. The request looked like POST /api/v1/referral/claim. It accepted a JSON body with a code parameter.

I decided to go back to their main website and see how this referral system worked in the browser. I generated a referral code for myself. It was a sixteen character alphanumeric string. I looked at it. A7f9.... Standard stuff.

But then I looked at the referral link of another user I found in a public disclosure. It was similar.

I went back to my proxy. I took my referral code and started tweaking it. I removed the last character. The server returned a 400 Bad Request. I changed the first character to a number. 400 Bad Request.

I was about to give up and move to another subdomain when I decided to look at the response headers of the referral page itself. Burp Suite has a feature called "Response" where you can see what the server sends back. In the headers, I saw X-Debug-Info: true.

My heart skipped a beat. Debug mode on a production server. It is like leaving the keys in the ignition of a Ferrari with the door open and a sign that says "Free Joyride."

I clicked on the link associated with that header, and it dumped a stack trace. It was messy. It was ugly. It was beautiful.

Buried in the stack trace, amidst the path names and the function calls, was a snippet of a SQL query. It looked like SELECT * FROM referrals WHERE code = 'A7f9...'.

I did not see an obvious SQL injection point there immediately, but I did see something else. I saw that the code was being compared in a way that suggested case insensitivity, and there was a comment in the code that said /* TODO: Implement rate limiting on claim endpoint */.

Rate limiting. That was the keyword.

The Infinite Money Glitch

I went back to my Repeater tab. I had a valid referral code from my own account. I knew that if I claimed it, I would get five dollars credited to a wallet on the site. It was a tiny amount, but it was a transaction.

I set up a payload. I realized that the server was not checking if I had already claimed a specific code, or perhaps the check was bypassable. But I wanted to see if I could claim the same code multiple times. This is a race condition or a logic flaw.

I sent the request. {"code": "MYVALIDCODE"}.

Response: 200 OK. Wallet balance: $5.00.

I sent it again. 200 OK. Wallet balance: $10.00.

I sent it again. 200 OK. Wallet balance: $15.00.

I froze. My hand hovered over the mouse. I sent it ten more times in rapid succession. 200 OK, 200 OK, 200 OK. My balance was skyrocketing. I had essentially found a way to print money on their platform.

Now, the seasoned hacker knows what to do here. You stop. You document. You do not exploit the hell out of it just to see how high the number can go. That is a one way ticket to getting banned and possibly facing legal trouble. I took a screenshot. I exported the request and response from Burp Suite. I wrote down the exact steps to reproduce the issue.

The Report and The Wait

I felt a rush of adrenaline that I have not felt since. It was a mix of fear and euphoria. I had found a critical business logic error combined with a missing rate limit. The impact was massive. An attacker could drain the company's promotional budgeCreate an account and obtain a valid referral code.

- Intercept the POST request to /api/v1/referral/claim. - Replay the request with the same code repeatedly. - Observe that the wallet balance increases with every request without error.Create an account and obtain a valid referral code. - Intercept the POST request to /api/v1/referral/claim. - Replay the request with the same code repeatedly. - Observe that the wallet balance increases with every request without error.t in minutes, or worse, manipulate the financial ledger in ways that would cause chaos for accounting.

I navigated to their disclosure program. I filled out the report. I was nervous. I did not want to sound like an idiot. I structured my report like this.

I hit submit. Then I waited.Title: Infinite Money Glitch via Referral Claim Endpoint and Missing Rate Limit

Summary: The referral claim endpoint at /api/v1/referral/claim allows users to claim the same referral code an unlimited number of times. This allows for the theft of promotional funds and inflation of wallet balances.

Steps to Reproduce:

I hit submit. Then I waited.Create aI hit submit. Then I waited.

n account and obtain a valid referral code.

Intercept the POST request to /api/v1/referral/claim.

Replay the request with the same code repeatedly.

Observe that the wallet balance increases with every request without error.

Impact: An attacker could drain all company funds allocated for referrals, leading to direct financial loss and reputational damage.

Proof of Concept: [Attached Burp Suite Project File]

I hit submit. Then I waited.

I hit submit. Then I waited.

The waiting game is the hardest part. You refresh your email every thirty seconds. You check the triage status. You wonder if they are laughing at you. You wonder if you missed something obvious and the "vulnerability" is actually a feature you are too dumb to understand.

Three days passed. I had moved on to hunting another target, trying to keep my mind off it. Then, the email notification pinged on my phone.

"New update on Report #123456."

My hands shook as I opened it. It was the triage team. The status was changed to "Resolved" and the severity was "Critical."

Then came the second email. The bounty award.

It was not a million dollars. It was not even ten thousand dollars. It was a solid, respectable $1,500. To me, at that time, living in a stale apartment, it was a fortune. It was validation. It was proof that I could do this.

I bought myself a decent meal and a new mechanical keyboard. I felt like a king.

What I'd Do Differently Now

Looking back on that story now, with the benefit of experience and hundreds of bugs under my belt, I realize how lucky I got. I stumbled into a debug header that I should not have seen. If I had not seen that header, I would not have focused on the query. I would have moved on.

If I were starting over today, knowing what I know now, I would do things differently. I would not rely on luck. I would build a machine that finds bugs for me.

Automate Everything Boring

First, I would automate my reconnaissance. The time I spent manually clicking through subdomains and copying and pasting URLs was wasted time. Today, I use pipelines that spin up a cloud instance, enumerate thousands of subdomains in minutes, scan for technologies, and feed the results directly into my browser. Automation is the force multiplier. If you are not automating the boring stuff, you are spending 90 percent of your time doing grunt work and 10 percent actually hacking.

If you want to skip the line I stood in for months, you should check out my Automated Recon Pipeline. It is the exact framework I use to scope out targets rapidly so I can get to the fun part, exploiting.

Build a Testing Methodology

Second, I would have a better methodology for testing. I was chaotic. I moved from one endpoint to another based on gut feeling. I should have been mapping the application. I should have been drawing diagrams of the data flow. I should have been looking for logic errors in financial transactions immediately, rather than poking at random login forms. You need to understand the business you are breaking. If you are hacking a crypto exchange, look for money flows. If you are hacking a social network, look for privacy leaks.

Master the Art of Communication

Third, I would learn to write better reports faster. My first report was okay, but it could have been sharper. The faster you can get a high quality report in front of a triager, the faster you get paid. Communication is half the battle.

The Long Game

The journey from that first bug bounty to where I am now was not a straight line. There were months of drought where I found nothing but low severity informational issues. There were times when I felt like quitting and going back to a "normal" job. But the thrill of the hunt is addictive. There is something deeply satisfying about looking at a system that is designed to keep people out and finding a way to slip through the cracks.

If you are sitting there right now, staring at a terminal window, feeling like you are never going to find that first bug, take a breath. You are not alone. Everyone starts somewhere. Even the top ranked hunters on the leaderboards started with a simple XSS or an IDOR.

Do not just rely on tools. Do not just rely on luck. Build a system. Hone your skills. And remember, the biggest vulnerabilities are often hidden in the features that developers think are too boring to break.

Your Roadmap to Success

One last thing. If you are serious about this, if you want to go from zero experience to pulling in the big bounties, you need a roadmap. You need a guide that cuts through the noise. I put together a comprehensive Bug Bounty From 0 to 60k Guide that covers everything from setting up your environment to advanced exploitation techniques. It is the resource I wish I had when I started.

The hack I found that night was simple, but it changed my life. It showed me that with enough persistence and the right mindset, you can dismantle the digital fortresses that the rest of the world takes for granted.

And while most people are focused on web applications and cloud infrastructure, there are entire attack surfaces that go completely unlogged and unmonitored. The hardware layer is still wide open for those brave enough to explore it.

Now, go find something broken, and work some magic.

See you next time.