I Found a Valid Bug Bounty With This One Simple Check

💸 I Found a Valid Bug Bounty With This One Simple Check | by ghostyjoe | in Bug Bounty Hunting: A Comprehensive Guide in English and french - Freedium Milestone: 20GB Reached We’ve reached 20GB of stored data — thank you for helping us grow! Patreon Ko-fi Liberapay Close < Go to the original 💸 I Found a Valid Bug Bounty With This One Simple Check (Most People Completely Ignore It) ghostyjoe Follow Bug Bounty Hunting: A Comprehensive Guide in English and french · ~3 min read · March 22, 2026 (Updated: March 22, 2026) · Free: No (Most People Completely Ignore It) ✍️ By Ghostyjoe 🎯 This Wasn't a Complex Hack No payloads. No brute force. No automation. Just one simple check. And it led to a valid bug bounty finding . 🧠 The Mistake Most Hunters Make Most beginners focus on: XSS SQLi RCE payload lists But here's the truth: 👉 Most real bugs come from things that shouldn't be exposed. Not things you "break". Things that are already broken. 🔎 The Check That Works Over and Over Again Whenever you find an endpoint like this: /api/user?id=123 Don't move on. 👉 Change the ID. /api/user?id=124 💥 What Happens Next If the response changes… 👉 You may be looking at an IDOR (Insecure Direct Object Reference) This can lead to: account data exposure profile access sensitive information leaks ⚠️ Why This Is So Powerful Because developers often: trust user input skip authorization checks assume IDs won't be guessed And that's where the bug lives. 🧪 Where To Look For This You'll find this everywhere: APIs mobile apps dashboards settings pages Look for: id= user= account= order= profile= 🔥 Real Bug Bounty Mindset Don't think: 👉 "How do I hack this?" Think: 👉 "Should I be allowed to see this?" That one shift changes everything. 💡 Why This Gets Accepted Because the impact is clear: accessing other users' data bypassing authorization breaking access control 👉 This is high severity in many programs ⚖️ Important (Don't Skip This) Only test: in-scope targets authorized programs allowed endpoints Never: access sensitive personal data go beyond proof-of-concept 🧠 What Most People Miss They see the endpoint… They test it once… Then move on. 👉 That's the mistake. Because sometimes the bug is literally: one number away. 🚀 Final Thought You don't need to be the smartest hacker. You just need to: 👉 slow down 👉 look closer 👉 question everything Because some of the best bugs are not hidden… They are just ignored. 👏 If this helped, follow for more real bug bounty techniques. ☕ Support my work: https://buymeacoffee.com/ghostyjoe #bug-bounty #hacking #security #cybersecurity #vulnerability Reporting a Problem Sometimes we have problems displaying some Medium posts. If you have a problem that some images aren't loading - try using VPN. Probably you have problem with access to Medium CDN (or fucking Cloudflare's bot detection algorithms are blocking you).