Today marks the highly anticipated launch of Bugcrowd’s Ingenuity Awards 2025! This annual event is a cornerstone of our commitment to recognizing and celebrating the exceptional talent within the hacking community. Over the coming days, we will be spotlighting outstanding individuals across four distinct categories, each designed to honor a unique facet of contributions to the industry.
Each day this week, a new winner will be announced from the following prestigious categories: Community leader of the year, Top Pentester of the year, Top P1 hacker of the year and Breakthrough hacker of the year.
We invite everyone to join us in celebrating these incredible achievements and acknowledging the profound impact these individuals have on community and hacking.
Bugcrowd is thrilled to announce that this year, the hacker community recognized sw33tLie as the Community Leader of the Year, a Bugcrowd Ingenuity Award. In an exclusive interview, sw33tLie shares profound insights into what this recognition means, the motivations behind his active involvement, and his vision for the future of the hacking community.
For sw33tLie, the recognition is a deeply personal affirmation. “It makes me genuinely proud because it validates that the effort and passion I’ve dedicated to hacking and bug bounty over the past five years have made a meaningful impact and are appreciated by my peers,” sw33tLie says. This sentiment underscores the dedication and hard work that often goes unrecognized by the public.
Despite this significant achievement, sw33tLie emphasizes the critical importance of humility. “At the same time, it’s crucial to remain humble and continuously seek to learn and grow.” His reason for maintaining this mentality speaks to his experience: “This is one of the fields where a motivated 14-year-old newcomer can quickly outperform someone with decades of experience. Staying humble keeps us open-minded and ensures we’re always prepared to learn from everyone, regardless of their age or experience.”
sw33tLie’s journey into community leadership did not stem from a preconceived plan but rather an organic evolution. sw33tLie clarifies, “When I first started in bug bounty, becoming influential wasn’t part of my plan—I simply wanted to succeed as a hacker, continuously sharpen my skills, and contribute meaningfully to the field.” The realization of the benefits of engagement became apparent over time. As he progressed in the field, he realized how much personal growth comes from actively engaging with the community, exchanging insights, and providing clear, constructive feedback. His approach to relationships in the community is direct and sincere. He strives to “communicate directly and honestly, always aiming to build a collaborative environment because I truly believe transparency benefits everyone involved.”
Among his notable contributions, sw33tLie is particularly proud of bbscope, a bug bounty scope aggregator tool. He explains its genesis as follows: “Initially, it was named ‘bcscope,’ designed specifically to simplify the process of fetching program scopes from Bugcrowd, including private invites, for my automation workflows.” Recognizing its broader utility, he expanded and publicly released it. He highlights the advantages of open sourcing, stating, “having it be open source turned out to be incredibly beneficial—not just for the community, but also personally, as the immediate and frequent feedback significantly improved the tool.” He admits to having thought of keeping this tool to himself to maintain a competitive edge, but ultimately, he believes the benefits of community collaboration vastly outweigh any potential downsides. He also mentions other open-source projects like uff, a ffuf fork, and sns, an IIS shortname scanner, though he now recommends shortscan as a superior alternative.
One of the most significant challenges he has faced is time constraints. He observes, “Many top hackers understandably stay laser-focused on finding bugs, rarely engaging with the community.” However, he sees value in a balanced approach. He believes that sharing knowledge and giving back help maintain a healthy ecosystem: “I remind myself how valuable shared resources were when I was starting out, and this motivates me to carve out time for community involvement.”
sw33tLie strongly believes that community contributions are fundamental to the advancement and ethics of cybersecurity. Without this collective effort, he thinks, “We’d miss out on critical shared knowledge, tools, and ethical standards that truly drive the entire field forward.”
For aspiring community leaders, sw33tLie offers a counterintuitive piece of advice. He warns, “Don’t focus too much on chasing the title of ‘community leader’—it might sound ironic, but leadership usually happens naturally when you consistently show passion, honesty, and willingness to help others.” His guidance is simple yet wise: “Learn, share openly, and support people genuinely. When you help others grow and succeed, people naturally look to you for guidance and inspiration. To me, that’s the real essence of leadership—empowering and enabling others through genuine and meaningful contributions.”
Looking ahead, sw33tLie’s goals involve a shift toward large-scale research. He explains, “Recently, I’ve shifted my approach to hacking a bit, realizing that I enjoy large-scale research more than individually hunting for bugs on specific targets.” His fascination lies in internet-wide research, citing CDN hacking as an example. He recalls a significant achievement from last year: “I published with my team our Unveiling TE.0 HTTP Request Smuggling, proving how vulnerabilities once thought impossible can be out in the wild and affect thousands of highly sensitive servers.” He is particularly enthusiastic about recent collaborations, including one with James Kettle after discovering they had a research collision. He says, “It’s been fantastic working together, and I’m even more excited that this will be shared at Blackhat and DEFCON this year.”
When asked about the most crucial quality for a community leader, sw33tLie’s answer was immediate and unequivocal: “Empathy, without a doubt.” He acknowledges the importance of technical skills but argues that an effective community leader must genuinely understand and relate to others. He emphasizes the global and diverse nature of the hacking community, where different sensitivities and perspectives are common. He believes, “Empathy helps leaders connect authentically with people, encourages inclusive collaboration, and ensures they genuinely listen and respond to the community’s diverse needs.”