How One Bug Bounty Researcher Chooses Which Features to Investigate
By Shilpa Kumari (@shilpakum)
Bug bounty hunting is as much about strategy as it is about technical skill. With sprawling modern applications exposing hundreds of features across web, mobile, and API surfaces, knowing where to aim your attention can mean the difference between a critical finding and hours lost in low-value rabbit holes.
In this piece, Shilpa Kumari β a security researcher active in the bug bounty community β shares the mental framework she uses to decide which features are worth investigating first.
1. Prioritize Features That Handle Trust Boundaries
Features that move data across trust boundaries β authentication, authorization, file uploads, and integrations with third-party services β consistently offer the richest attack surface. If a feature decides who can do what, it deserves a closer look before anything else.
2. Look for Recent Changes
Newly shipped features and recently refactored code tend to carry more bugs than battle-tested components. Release notes, changelogs, and product announcements are often the fastest signal of where fresh vulnerabilities may be hiding.
3. Follow the Money and the Data
Features tied to payments, personal data, or privileged operations are high-impact by definition. Even a low-severity flaw in these areas can escalate quickly, which makes them attractive targets for both researchers and malicious actors.
4. Assess Complexity and Novelty
Complex features β those with many moving parts, custom parsers, or unusual protocol implementations β are harder to get right. Novelty matters too: a feature that has never been publicly tested is statistically more likely to have an unpatched flaw.
5. Match Features to Your Strengths
Ultimately, the best feature to investigate is one that aligns with your existing skills. A researcher fluent in GraphQL or OAuth will extract more value from those surfaces than from an unfamiliar mobile binary. Play to your strengths and expand outward deliberately.
Key Takeaways
- Focus on trust boundaries, authentication, and authorization flows.
- Watch release notes for newly introduced or changed features.
- Treat data- and money-handling features as high-priority targets.
- Complexity and novelty correlate with vulnerability density.
- Align your targets with your technical strengths for maximum efficiency.
As applications continue to grow in 2026 β with AI-assisted code generation accelerating feature velocity β the discipline of choosing what to investigate is becoming more valuable than ever. A deliberate triage strategy beats random probing every time.
via GitHub AI Blog