PRACTICAL BUG BOUNTY

These are some of the key takeaways from TCM Security's Practical Bug Bounty course. Throughout the course, I learned various web application security testing techniques, common vulnerabilities, and recommended mitigation strategies. The labs provided hands-on experience in identifying, exploiting, and documenting security issues.

Vulnerability	Category	Description	Mitigation
Brute Force	Authentication	Automated password guessing against login forms.	Account lockout, rate limiting, CAPTCHA, strong passwords.
Credential Stuffing	Authentication	Using leaked credentials from previous breaches.	MFA, breach detection, block known compromised passwords.
Session Hijacking	Authentication	Stealing valid session tokens to impersonate users.	Secure cookies, token rotation, short session lifetimes.
Weak Password Policies	Authentication	Allowing simple or commonly used passwords.	Enforce strong password requirements and MFA.
MFA Bypass	Authentication	Exploiting flaws in multi-factor authentication implementations.	Secure backup codes, rate limiting, stronger MFA methods.
IDOR	Authorization	Accessing another user's data by modifying identifiers.	Server-side authorization checks on every request.
Privilege Escalation	Authorization	Gaining higher privileges than intended.	RBAC, least privilege, deny-by-default policies.
Missing Function-Level Access Control	Authorization	Accessing restricted functionality without authorization.	Centralized access control and permission validation.
Forced Browsing	Authorization	Accessing hidden resources by guessing URLs.	Authenticate and authorize access to all resources.
Path Traversal	Authorization	Using file path manipulation to access restricted files.	Validate file paths and restrict directory access.
XXE	Other	Exploiting XML parsers to read files or perform SSRF.	Disable external entities and use secure parsers.
XSS	Other	Injecting malicious scripts into web pages.	Output encoding, CSP, and input validation.

Key Skills Practiced

• Web Application Reconnaissance
• Authentication Testing
• Authorization Testing
• Session Management Testing
• Input Validation Testing
• Vulnerability Reporting
• Security Mitigation Analysis

Course Outcome

The course provided practical experience in identifying common web application vulnerabilities, understanding their impact, exploiting them in a controlled environment, and recommending effective remediation strategies.