Cybersecurity Researcher Earns $30,000 from Bug Bounty by Exploiting Broken Access Control Vulnerabilities

The video demonstrates how a cybersecurity researcher earned over $30,000 from a single bug bounty by exploiting broken access control (BAC) vulnerabilities in a web application. The presenter, NahamSec, showcases five real-world bugs—including insecure direct object references (IDOR), improper API filtering, and leaked authentication tokens—chained together to achieve a full account takeover. Key techniques include manipulating numerical IDs, removing or altering query parameters (e.g., clinicID), and extracting sensitive data like password hashes, O tokens, and MFA secrets from HTML source code. The lab environment, available for free on HackingHub, replicates the vulnerabilities, including an impersonation feature that allowed unauthorized admin access via hardcoded tokens. The presenter emphasizes chaining low-severity bugs to escalate impact, such as combining leaked tokens with impersonation endpoints to bypass authentication entirely. Additional focus areas include multi-tenant platform vulnerabilities, where org IDs or address IDs can be exploited to access cross-tenant data. The video also mentions using AI tools like Claude to automate endpoint mapping and vulnerability detection.