Why Your Recon is Lying to You — And What to Do About It 🕵️♂️
Hey Hackers 👾
Let’s talk about a trap almost everyone falls into — trusting their recon way too much.
You fire up subfinder, httpx, dirsearch, and maybe even scrape some JS files. Looks good, right? But here’s the truth: most recon only shows you what the app wants you to see. Not the hidden stuff. Not the real attack surface. And definitely not where the juicy logic bugs live.
Surface Recon ≠ Full Picture 🎭
Recon gives you the skeleton. But real bugs live in the flesh — buried in frontend routes, undocumented APIs, forgotten staging servers, or features that only show up for certain users.
Here’s what your recon probably missed:
– Internal API calls exposed only to admins
– Hidden frontend routes referenced deep in JS bundles
– Old endpoints still reachable but not linked anywhere
– React Router or Angular paths that never hit the server
– Business logic only triggered under specific flows
Recon tools are great. But they’re not omniscient. You’ve got to reverse engineer the app’s assumptions if you want to find what everyone else misses.
Go Beyond Passive — Get Surgical 🔬
Try this next time:
– Watch XHR requests while clicking around logged-in as different roles
– Look for API calls made only after specific UI interactions
– Parse JS bundles for function names, route strings, or internal tokens
– Use tools like jaeles, LinkFinder, or Arjun to scrape deeper
– And don’t forget source maps — sometimes they’re left wide open 😏
Recon Doesn’t Find Bugs — Context Does 🧠
You’ll never find an IDOR just by looking at URLs. You need to understand the logic. You need to see what shouldn’t be allowed — and then try it anyway.
That’s where real bug bounty gold lives:
Behind auth logic. In forgotten flows. Or in assumptions like “this should never happen.”
💡TL;DR:
Recon helps, but it lies by omission. If you’re only looking at what tools show you, you’re playing the game on easy mode. The deeper you dig into behavior, state, and logic — the more you’re playing like a real attacker.
👇 Drop the weirdest hidden route or logic bug you found after your recon said “nothing here.”
Until next time, trust the app less, test it more.
— 🫡
