Joining the Hunt

This book is designed to give you the practical experience necessary to take an interest in security and turn it into a fun, profitable pursuit.

The goal is that, by focusing on real submission reports, you'll get a better feel for where and how to discover vulnerabilities in the wild, and by following along at home, pentesting real sites (as well as deliberately-vulnerable web apps), you'll get invaluable hands-on experience. Sometimes the best way to learn is to get a smattering of theory and then just jump right in.

This chapter will focus on what you'll learn, how you'll learn it, and how to generally get the most out of this work. It will cover the following:

• The benefits of bug bounty programs
• What your pentesting background should be before coming into this book
• Setting up your environment and the tools to know
• Your next steps