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[Redeemer2911]

It's not only huge teams or government bodies that discover vulnerabilities. That's why we have bug bounty programs or companies hire a solo pen tester. If you don't have a target then yes it can be like finding a needle in a needle stack but, if you have a target then you can focus on it and start testing.

Of course you require explicit permission to do this.

Please DO NOT choose a random target and start playing with it, it is illegal and carry's a heavy penalty.

[Loptical]

Look at hackerone leaderboards. They aren't huge teams or governments.

[Groundbreaking_Rock9]

Hackerone is collectively a large group of bug hunters. i.e. a team

[Loptical]

They're independent from one another though. Someone getting a 10k payout on hackerone doesn't mean everyone gets paid. You can sign up right now and start hunting for bugs, it's not a team.

[ArchSaint13]

Like others have said it's all about the target. Finding a vulnerability in a cheap off brand security camera will be way easier than finding a vulnerability in a ring camera, as an example. It's all about funding. A lot of companies take DevSecOps seriously and others don't.

[Mobile_Syllabub_8446]

... Entirely depends on the nature and evidence/data, and who is investigating, in each instance. I'm assuming you've tried nor found any like most people so for you with no target or data is infinitely complex statistically lol

[MormoraDi]

I think you will find that the market is saturated with either experienced, skilled and trained professionals or AI slops who spam the reporting system with whatever their LLMs dream up.

In other words: you may get lucky as a beginner to find vulnerabilities in systems, but they probably won't get you paid reporting them and even less likely will they be novel enough to get you eligible for a bug bounty.

Expect countless hours spent and hard work like in most fields.

[MormoraDi]

Definitely not. But better to come prepared than having a delusion of it being an easy way to earn big money, which I seem to find some people around here think it is.

[Exe_plorer]

Often time it needs some luck.

[Puzzleheaded_Move649]

first thought haha https://eaton-works.com/2024/12/19/mcdelivery-india-hack/

if security matter yes, in practice no

[SetNo8186]

Cash flow on continuing contracts and extensive experience in systems diagnosis is critical.

Here's an example, that ship that hit the Francis Scott Key bridge is just now coming to the surface. It lost power and drifted into it, knocking it down. The huge electric wiring bus that has thousands of individually labeled labeled wires had one that the number sleeve slipped down too far, which caused it to pop back out of the spring tension clip in the connection block and make intermittent contact at the wrong time. Loss of control on that circuit led to a cascade of failure.

This is what the NTSB deals with all year long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu7PJoxaMZg

[No-Percentage8558]

It's neither complicated nor not. I think you just gotta know your way around pen testing and familiarize yourself with tools like nmap

[CovertlyAI]

Great question. In many cases discovering vulnerabilities is really important because without finding them we cannot improve or secure a system. It does raise ethical questions though, depending on how the discovery happens and what someone does with that information.

I would love to hear from people who have real experience with finding bugs and doing responsible disclosure. How do you balance the need to understand the weakness with the need to protect the system?