Breaking Through the Firewall: How I Bypassed a WAF and Found a Critical Bug with $1700

The Hacker vs. The Firewall

“Firewalls are like locked doors. The trick is knowing which window is left open.” 😈💻

It was 2 AM, and I was staring at my Burp Suite window, watching 403 Forbidden responses flood my screen.
I had spent hours testing this bug bounty target, trying to break through its defenses.

The problem? A Web Application Firewall (WAF) was blocking every attack I threw at it.

💀 SQL Injection? Blocked.
💀 XSS Payloads? Filtered.
💀 Path Traversal? 403 Forbidden.

I was on the verge of rage-quitting and questioning my entire existence as a bug bounty hunter. Was I even good at this? 🤦‍♂️

But then I remembered one of my favorite hacking quotes:

“A good hacker is not the one who knows everything, but the one who refuses to give up.”

And that’s when it hit me… Every security system has a weakness. And I was about to find it.

What happened next? I found a WAF bypass technique that led to a critical bug and a $1,700 bounty. 🎯💰