Hi, I’m Antonio Rivera, a Security Researcher, Bug Hunter, and Ethical Hacker. I have secured some companies, received bounties, Hall of Fame mentions and received Letters of Appreciation and Recognition.
This is the story of how I ran into a Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA) vulnerability while poking around a web application.
The first thing I do when testing a new application is create a few accounts. It helps me see how the app behaves from different perspectives.
I spent some time exploring forms, menus, and pages to understand how data moved between users.
Once I understood the app, I started testing for IDORs on my own account. At first, nothing happened. I tried other tests, like race conditions and business logic checks, but still, nothing produced results.
Then, while reviewing some requests, one caught my attention:
{"operation":"userDelete","params":{"uid":"MyID","companyId":"clapthispost1234"}}
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It looked ordinary, but I decided to test it with a token from another account. To my surprise, it worked, That was when I realized an IDOR existed.
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This reinforced a simple truth: careful observation and thinking like an attacker often reveal issues that automated tools miss.