The path from a small town in India to becoming a respected penetration tester and hacker isn’t always straightforward, but for Nitesh Bhatter—known in the community as bugcrowdhack3rs—it began with old fashioned curiosity. “My journey into cybersecurity started during my undergraduate studies in India, where I worked on a project involving cryptography and steganography,” he explains. That initial spark led him to teach himself wireless hacking through resources from Vivek Ramachandran, setting the foundation for what would become a life-long career in learning and bug hunting.
After pursuing a double master’s in Computer Science and Information Security at Johns Hopkins University, Bhatter joined a startup where he worked on engagements across web, mobile, APIs, and IoT, honing his ethical hacking skills. A pivotal moment came in 2011, when he discovered a cross-site scripting vulnerability in Reddit’s open-source code. “I acted ethically and reported to the Reddit team, which earned me recognition from the community,” he recalls. “I discovered Bugcrowd in 2012, which was a game-changer, giving me the chance to participate in external programs, report bugs, and get rewarded.”
While many hackers were focused elsewhere, Bhatter recognized an underserved opportunity. “Early on in 2011-2012, mobile was relatively under-targeted—there was less public guidance and fewer researchers—so it was a high-leverage area,” he notes. His specialization in mobile application security for both Android and iOS at Cigital revealed a pattern that others were missing. “Once I mastered proxy-based traffic analysis (e.g., installing a trusted certificate to inspect app↔server traffic) I realized many of the same classes of web and API bugs applied to mobile, but with weaker protections.”
The findings were significant. “I often found apps calling older or undocumented APIs, hard-coded or accidentally committed API keys in binaries, and client-side checks present in the app but not enforced on the server (rate limiting, authorization, etc.),” Bhatter explains. His methodology combined network interception, static and binary inspection to look for secrets or logic flaws, and focused API testing. “By combining network interception, static/binary inspection used to look for secrets or logic flaws, and focused API testing, I could surface fewer but higher-impact findings—which is why I continued to deepen my mobile expertise.”
When asked about vulnerabilities that aren’t getting enough attention, Bhatter doesn’t hesitate to highlight AI prompt injection. “Malicious inputs can trick an LLM-based system into revealing sensitive backend details (internal API endpoints, credentials, or policy logic) or performing unintended actions,” he warns. “It’s dangerous because it’s easy to craft and often overlooked; defenders must treat model prompts and outputs as part of the attack surface and apply strict context separation, provenance checks, and output filtering.”
But his concerns extend beyond traditional attack surfaces. “With the rise of wearable technologies—such as smart glasses—capable of recording, scanning, and identifying individuals in real time, we’re likely to see new forms of targeted social-engineering attacks,” Bhatter observes. “Attackers could use these devices to capture personal or contextual data on the fly and craft highly convincing phishing or impersonation attempts.” He believes the security community should begin considering wearable-enabled reconnaissance and real-time data correlation as emerging security risks.
Bhatter believes AI is reshaping how security work gets done. “I think AI is fundamentally changing the security landscape by making automation accessible to everyone,” he says. “In the past, effective security automation often required advanced scripting skills, but now tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor lower that barrier; anyone can generate Python scripts or test harnesses to automate tasks.”
The impact extends beyond just writing code. “Writing clear and actionable security reports used to take a lot of effort. Now, with the right inputs—like a vulnerable URL, steps to reproduce, and impact—AI can generate professional descriptions, remediation guidance, and even sample code fixes,” Bhatter explains. “This allows security researchers to focus more on finding vulnerabilities and less on repetitive documentation.”
On the debated topic of certifications, Bhatter offers a nuanced perspective. “I think certifications have value, but it really depends on the intent. The real benefit comes from the preparation process rather than just collecting certificates,” he maintains. He points to his OSCP experience as an example: “When I pursued the OSCP, I had to set up my own labs, practice exploiting vulnerabilities, and really push myself to ‘try harder’ until I could achieve root on a machine. That hands-on experience was extremely valuable.”
However, he’s clear about the limitations of certifications. “I don’t believe having ten theoretical certificates automatically makes someone a strong security researcher. Knowledge has to be applied,” Bhatter states. His advice is practical: “Pursue certifications in areas you’re actively working in—for example, if you’re doing cloud security work in AWS, then an AWS security certification makes sense.”
Bhatter’s work extends into red teaming, which he differentiates from traditional penetration testing. “Red teaming, on the other hand, is a full-scope, goal-oriented assessment designed to simulate a real-world attacker,” he explains. “Instead of just finding vulnerabilities, the objective is to test detection, response, and resilience by emulating realistic attack paths—starting from reconnaissance to privilege escalation and lateral movement—while staying stealthy to evaluate how well the organization can detect and respond to an actual intrusion.”
The intensity is real. “Yes—red teaming can be intense: long, focused bursts of investigation, creative problem-solving, and pressure to avoid mistakes,” Bhatter admits. But collaboration makes it worthwhile. “After the exercise, I work closely with the blue team, incident responders, and system owners to review attack paths, share indicators of compromise, and walk through how the breach occurred,” he notes. “This collaborative debrief helps the defenders strengthen their monitoring, response playbooks, and overall security posture.”
For newcomers to hacking, Bhatter’s guidance is direct: “Start small and deliberate: pick one area (e.g., web auth, XSS, or IDOR) and grind that topic until you can both identify and explain the risk, why it matters, and how to remediate it.” He recommends hands-on practice through Burp Academy and platforms like TryHackMe and HackTheBox.
Looking ahead, Bhatter sees his journey moving toward a hybrid of deeper hands-on offensive work and smart automation. “I plan on using AI and custom tooling to automate repetitive discovery and triage so I can spend more time on high-value, creative problems (multi-step logic flaws, chained exploits, and adversary-style attack paths).”
And for maintaining sanity in a demanding field? “I make time for daily walks, light workouts, and meditation, which help clear my mind and reset focus after long hacking sessions,” he shares. His philosophy, influenced by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, remains: “keeping things simple and keep learning in ways that allow skills to compound over time.”
For hackers who want to stay in the know about the Bugcrowd community and get involved, follow us on X, Instagram and sign up!
For security teams who want to work with pentesters like bugcrowdhack3rs, contact us and we’ll help you set up your first bug bounty program, pen test, or red teaming engagement. Check out our new guide, Get to know the Crowd, to learn about more of the experts who work on our Platform.