Bug Bounty Recon Pipeline

Bug Bounty Recon Pipeline

Stand up an automated recon pipeline that surfaces new attack surface as it appears.

When to Use

• You are starting a bug bounty program and need a repeatable recon workflow
• You want to detect changes (new subdomains, ports, endpoints) over time

Pipeline Stages

1. Scope Ingestion

• Parse program scope from the policy page; store exact in-scope patterns (*.example.com vs example.com)
• Reject anything out of scope at query time, not by memory

2. Subdomain Enumeration

• Passive: certificate transparency logs (crt.sh), amass passive, subfinder with multiple sources
• Active: amass active, DNS bruteforce (puredns), permutations (gotator)
• Resolve and probe live hosts (httpx): status, title, tech stack, CDN

3. Content Discovery

• URL collection: waybackurls, gau, katana crawl
• Pattern match for high-value endpoints: API keys, login portals, admin panels, GraphQL, .git, .env (report-worthy without reading contents)
• Screenshot everything (gowitness / axiom) for manual review

4. Port and Service Scan

• nmap -sV top ports on in-scope IPs, plus full range on interesting hosts
• Tag non-HTTP services (RDP, SMB, databases) for targeted testing

5. Change Detection

• Re-run stages on a schedule (daily/weekly)
• Diff outputs; alert on new subdomains, new ports, new endpoints, changed tech stacks
• Store everything in version-controlled or timestamped directories

Tooling Notes

• Run from VPS/VPN only where program policy permits automated scanning
• Rate-limit aggressively; many programs ban aggressive automation
• Containers (e.g., via axiom/nuclei-templates) keep tool versions consistent

Output

A prioritized target list: new/changed assets, annotated with observed technologies and suspected entry points.