When I was starting out as a Bug Bounty Hunter, I searched the internet: How do I get started in bug bounty? In this write-up, I will list the technical resources I’ve come across. I don’t think finding the technical resources has ever been the real problem. Most of us have internet access. But we are often lazy, impatient and inconsistent.

Technical Resources

Books:

  1. Web Hacking 101 by Pete Yaworski
  2. Bug Bounty Bootcamp by Vickie Li
  3. The Web Application Hacker’s Handbook by Dafydd Stuttard and Marcus Pinto (OLD BUT GOLD)
  4. For additional books, check out this repository

Online Resources:

  1. PortSwigger Academy (MUST)
  2. Hacker101
  3. BugCrowd University
  4. Bug Bounty Forum Resources
  5. Reading every single writeup that has ever existed on Bug Bounty
  6. Follow the right people on X (Twitter)

If we read the above, then we will 100% have the technical knowledge to find vulnerabilities. Now all we need is practice, patience and consistency.

Tips

  • While reading these books, we will find many terms/concepts/technologies that we don’t know about. We have to learn them along the way. We don’t need to finish the books from cover to cover. We can pause the reading and learn about the terms/concepts/technologies we need to know. The author of these books will most likely mention about the prerequisites in each chapter.
  • Use AI tools (Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek) extensively while learning about new concepts/technologies from the books.
  • While reading books, practice along the way. This is the stage where we will learn the most.
  • I will recommend to go through a single book 2-3 times (on average) to have in-depth understanding about the concepts.
  • We don’t need to master all of the technologies before going to hunt for bugs. But we need to be comfortable while reading HTML and JavaScript codes.
  • Learn a Programming Language by heart (I will recommend Python or Go)