About N0CK
N0CK started in a dimly lit dorm room at 2 AM, fueled by frustration and cold coffee.
I'm a cybersecurity student who fell into the bug bounty world during my second year. The thrill of finding that first XSS was incredible — proof that security research could be both intellectually rewarding and practical. But after the hundredth time manually testing the same endpoints, checking the same headers, documenting the same evidence, the excitement faded into tedium.
There had to be a better way.
The Problem
Bug bounty hunting is 90% repetition, 10% insight. You're testing the same classes of vulnerabilities across dozens of targets, following checklists, documenting findings in identical formats. The work is necessary but mechanical.
Meanwhile, existing tools fell into two camps: enterprise scanners that cost more than my tuition and threw false positives like confetti, or open-source scripts held together with duct tape and hope. Nothing felt built for the solo researcher who needed precision, safety, and respect for program rules.
The Solution
N0CK is the tool I needed but couldn't find. An autonomous assistant that handles the repetitive reconnaissance and testing while I focus on the creative problem-solving — the part of security research that actually matters.
But automation in security is dangerous. A misconfigured scanner can trigger rate limits, violate terms of service, or worse — cause real damage. So N0CK was built with constraints first: scope gates, rate limiting, non-destructive defaults, evidence redaction. The guardrails aren't optional; they're the foundation.
Every feature in N0CK solves a problem I've personally hit. The scope parser exists because I accidentally tested out-of-scope subdomains. The adaptive rate limiter exists because I got banned from a program for being too aggressive. The confidence scoring exists because I wasted hours chasing false positives at 3 AM.
The Philosophy
Precision over volume. One validated finding beats a hundred maybes.
Safety over speed. Respecting program rules and system boundaries isn't negotiable.
Signal over noise. Clear reports with redacted evidence and reproduction steps — the kind I'd want to receive as a security engineer.
What's Next
N0CK is still early. Version 0.2 just shipped, and there's a long roadmap ahead: better authentication testing, GraphQL deep inspection, machine learning for anomaly detection, collaborative features for teams.
I'm building N0CK between classes, late nights, and weekend security conferences. It's a solo project for now — closed source while I figure out the right model for sustainability. But the goal is to eventually share it with the community that taught me everything I know.
If you're a researcher who's spent hours doing the same manual checks, who's missed critical findings because you were too burned out to look closely, who's wanted a smarter way to hunt — N0CK is for you.
Built with precision. Aim. Hit. Report.