The 10 Most Popular Bug Bounty Courses and Training Programs for Beginners

While hackers were once thought of as hooded figures sitting in dark rooms, inhabiting mysterious and secluded parts of the internet, the times are thankfully changing. The popularity of white hats and ethical hacking is soaring, and becoming a lucrative career option for many. Bug bounty hunting is one of the most sought after jobs for young hackers just entering the industry. Some might take on it as a hobby, a way to hone their hacking skills; and for others, it's truly a lucrative full-time career option. In 2020 alone, bug bounty hunters earned a record 40 million for reporting security vulnerabilities over the bug bounty platform Hacker one. Many new and enthusiastic hackers join the community on a daily basis, and they need good resources to help them start. There's a ton of potentially unfamiliar terminology, topics, techniques and tools that new bug bounty hunters need to understand before they can even begin to develop a practical approach. Thankfully, the bug bounty community is known for being supportive, open to sharing knowledge and welcoming to beginners. Because of this, you're able to find a wealth of inexpensive learning materials online. In starting your career, one of the best ways to learn the basics of bug bounty hunting is with training programs and courses. We asked the Twitter community as well as our favorite hackers for their advice on the best of these resources, and thus this list was born. The courses and training are listed in no particular order as each can help different individuals with different base skill levels. Once you've gotten a hand on the basics of bug bounty hunting and the theoretical knowledge you'll need for it, be sure to test your skills by hacking intentionally vulnerable websites for penetration testing and ethical hacking and check out the best bug bounty browser extensions once you are ready to start building your toolstack. 1. Bug Bounty Hunter When we took our question about your favorite bug bounty hunting courses and training platforms to Twitter, the clear winner was Bug Bounty Hunter. Created by well-known hacker and bug bounty hunter Sean, better known as zseano, Bug Bounty Hunter is for beginners and experienced hackers alike. You'll be able to learn skills and test them against custom-made web applications featuring vulnerabilities based on real bug bounty findings. Aiming to be the go-to for all things bug bounty, the platform offers plenty of security-related content, including guides on starting out in bug bounty hunting, explorations of most common vulnerabilities, must-have tools, and tidbits of valuable bug bounty hunting methodologies. A Bug Bounty Hunter membership gets you access to zseano's complete and highly detailed methodology for finding security vulnerabilities in web applications. And as a custom-made web application to test your practical skills, BBH offers Barker, which emulates a real target, contains over 100 vulnerabilities based on real-life findings, and offers different difficulty levels. The creator constantly updates the app with new vulnerabilities, and if you follow zseano's methodology, you should be able to find almost all vulnerabilities on Barker. And to add fun to the mix, Barker is gamified, so you'll level up as you hone your skills and discover more vulnerabilities. Once you've discovered 25 unique bugs, you can join Hackevents, a live hacking event with pros and even win bounties. BBH membership also gives you access to BountyTraining, with training videos on specific topics and demos of their application. All in all, Bug Bounty Hunter is a young platform, but a promising one that's quickly become the community's favorite. 2. Pentester Lab Pentester Lab might not be specifically bug bounty hunting-targeted but it's a great, well-known platform that provides online and offline labs designed to teach web application security and penetration testing. The platform offers free exercises and a bootcamp for those just getting into w...

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