The cursor blinked. My finger hovered over the mouse button, heart pounding like a drum solo in my chest. One click. That’s all it took. One click to submit my very first bug bounty report. Not for some minor glitch, but for what I suspected was a critical vulnerability in a major e-commerce platform—a way to bypass payment processing entirely. Was I right? Was I catastrophically wrong? Only the “Submit” button knew. I clicked. And my life veered off course.

Twelve months earlier, I was drowning in student debt and surviving on instant noodles, working a soul-crushing IT helpdesk job. Security fascinated me, but breaking into the field felt impossible without expensive certifications I couldn’t afford. Then, I stumbled upon bug bounty platforms: websites where companies invite ethical hackers to find security flaws in exchange for cash rewards. Get paid to hack? Legally? It sounded too good to be true. My “lab” became my tiny apartment after hours, fueled by caffeine and desperation.

The first few months were brutal. I felt like a toddler wandering into a quantum physics lecture. I’d spend nights meticulously testing web applications, submitting reports with trembling excitement… only to receive terse rejections: “Duplicate.” “Not…