A Beginner’s Guide
If I were to start learning how to hack on real targets I would follow these resources to getting started. You do need some prerequisite knowledge such as Linux, Networking, and Programming before this will be useful. See what Nahamsec recommends to know.
It’s the approach I’m taking to learn web security on real targets like PayPal this month (March 2025). I’m hoping to improve my hacking methodology to find bugs and be more than a beginner at pen testing.
PortSwigger Labs is the place to go for learning web application hacking techniques. You learn to use the tool Burp Suite and you can get the community edition for free along with doing the labs for free.
Here is my progress so far as of March 31st 2025
The web application hacker’s handbook is a good companion to the labs in the web security academy. It’s an older book a little outdated but most of the content is still useful so grab a copy still. It includes details about many vulnerabilities and hacking steps for executing them. Along with a hacker methodology at the end.
The OWASP Testing Guide is a gold standard methodology for attacking a web application. It is very detailed and it will take a long time to learn all the vulnerabilities in there but this is a good guide on what to look for in a real target.
Payload All The Things is a great resource for knowing what to do when hacking. It gives payloads for each vulnerability that you can try on a target and getting familiar with this is next to the testing guide in importance
Finally Pentester.land is a great resource for reading write ups for many vulnerability types found on real targets both CVEs and on bug bounty platforms or pen tests. You should be reading this often to get familiar with what security bugs look like in the wild.
I’m still learning but have started a bug bounty study group and have been working on practicing on real targets. Hacking to learn about security bugs never ends it’s a journey. Hope you enjoyed this article. Sign up for Bugcrowd, HackerOne or Intigriti and start hunting on real targets while following these resources.
Feel free to post in the comments.
is the discord server still active?
i am also learning from all these resources.
would be really nice if i can also join
The discord is there but not very active at the moment. I’m hoping that more people will learn and be actively learning bug bounty. I will update the discord link in the post