> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://bugbounty.cavementech.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://bugbounty.cavementech.com/bug-bounty-for-beginners.md).
# Bug Bounty for Beginners
### Web Application Penetration Testing/ Bugbounty
Web application penetration testing or bugbounty focuses on finding gaps and weaknesses in a web application. Testing is commonly performed from a user perspective by interacting with the application's user interface and its APIs. The goal is to assess how the application handles user input, authentication, authorisation, sessions, and data processing. Weaknesses in web applications can have a great impact on its users because web applications are usually exposed to the internet.
The diagram above outlines a simple interaction between a penetration tester and a web application and its components. In a web application penetration test, the application is tested for weaknesses in different areas such as authentication, authorisation, session management, input and output validation, and security configuration.
* **Authentication**: This area is evaluated for weaknesses in the application's credential handling, password policy, account lockout mechanisms, multi-factor authentication (MFA) implementation, protection against automated attacks such as brute-force and credential stuffing, password-reset flow and overall authentication-related logics.
* **Authorisation**: This area is evaluated for weaknesses in the application's access control mechanism, ensuring users can only access resources and perform actions permitted by their role, and protection against vertical and horizontal privilege escalation attacks.
* **Session management**: This area is evaluated for weaknesses in how sessions are created, maintained, and invalidated. This includes session fixation risks, session invalidation after logout, idle timeout enforcement, secure cookie attributes, and protection against cross-site request forgery (CSRF).
* **Input and output validation**: This area is evaluated for weaknesses in the application's data handling controls, including protection against injection attacks, data type validation, and output handling.
* **Security configuration**: This area is evaluated for gaps in the server and application configurations, including security headers, error handling behaviour, rate-limiting controls, cryptographic configuration, and exposure of unnecessary services or features.
### Best OSINT Course for Beginners
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