u/AliAyman333

Hey everyone, I need some advice or just someone to tell me I'm not going crazy.

Lately, I’ve been experiencing some serious memory and focus issues, and it’s honestly starting to scare me. For context, I am a university student diving really deep into a highly technical field (cybersecurity, networking, and complex tech concepts). It requires a massive amount of brainstorming, deep focus, and mental effort on a daily basis.

I am 20 years old, dealing with high stress levels, and although I get a good amount of sleep (7 to 9 hours) starting late around 2 AM, the actual quality of my sleep is really poor, I work out on and off, and I don't consume any drugs or alcohol at all.

But recently, my brain just feels... broken. Here is what's happening:

• Losing my vocabulary: I keep forgetting basic words in my native language. I know exactly what I want to express, but the words just get stuck on the tip of my tongue.
• Forgetting names: I forget the names of people I know if I haven't seen them in just a short while, my mind goes completely blank when we meet, even though they remember my name perfectly.
• Zero passive retention: I'll watch a movie, and shortly after, I can't even remember the core plot or specific scenes I watched.

It feels like my brain’s RAM is completely full and it's just deleting random, everyday files to keep functioning for my studies.

Has anyone else experienced this kind of extreme brain fog or memory loss purely from academic burnout, mental overload, or intense studying? If you have, is this normal? And more importantly, what did you do to snap out of it and get your cognitive sharpness back?

Any advice, routines, or habits that helped you "reset" your brain would be hugely appreciated!

Hey everyone, I need some advice or just someone to tell me I'm not going crazy.

Lately, I’ve been experiencing some serious memory and focus issues, and it’s honestly starting to scare me. For context, I am a university student diving really deep into a highly technical field (cybersecurity, networking, and complex tech concepts). It requires a massive amount of brainstorming, deep focus, and mental effort on a daily basis.

I am 20 years old, dealing with high stress levels, and although I get a good amount of sleep (7 to 9 hours) starting late around 2 AM, the actual quality of my sleep is really poor, I work out on and off, and I don't consume any drugs or alcohol at all.

But recently, my brain just feels... broken. Here is what's happening:

• Losing my vocabulary: I keep forgetting basic words in my native language. I know exactly what I want to express, but the words just get stuck on the tip of my tongue.
• Forgetting names: I forget the names of people I know if I haven't seen them in just a short while, my mind goes completely blank when we meet, even though they remember my name perfectly.
• Zero passive retention: I'll watch a movie, and shortly after, I can't even remember the core plot or specific scenes I watched.

It feels like my brain’s RAM is completely full and it's just deleting random, everyday files to keep functioning for my studies.

Has anyone else experienced this kind of extreme brain fog or memory loss purely from academic burnout, mental overload, or intense studying? If you have, is this normal? And more importantly, what did you do to snap out of it and get your cognitive sharpness back?

Any advice, routines, or habits that helped you "reset" your brain would be hugely appreciated!

Hey everyone,

I’m currently facing a huge roadblock in my bug bounty journey and could really use some practical advice from the hunters here.

I recently managed to score my very first bounty by finding a simple Open Redirect. That gave me a massive motivation boost, so I decided to dive deep into higher-impact vulnerabilities, specifically IDOR and Business Logic flaws.

I feel like I’ve done my homework. Here is what I’ve studied so far:

Solved all the relevant PortSwigger Web Security Academy labs.

Read the related chapters in Peter Yaworski's "Real-World Bug Bounty Hunting".

Read countless write-ups on Medium.

Watched hours of YouTube tutorials and PoCs.

I understand the mechanics of IDOR perfectly in theory. The problem? The moment I jump onto a real-world target, I freeze.

The applications are massive, the APIs are complex, and the endpoints don't look anything like the clean, obvious ?user_id=1 parameters I saw in the labs. I end up staring at my Burp Suite HTTP history, testing random GUIDs, and ultimately finding absolutely nothing. It feels like there is a massive gap between the sterilized environments of CTFs/Labs and the messy reality of production apps.

My questions for you:

How did you personally bridge the gap between understanding a vulnerability in a lab and actually spotting it in the wild?

What is your practical methodology when hunting for IDORs on a fresh target? (Where do you look first? How do you map the app?)

Are there specific features or target types you recommend for someone transitioning from theory to practical hunting?

Any advice, methodology tips, or reality checks would be massively appreciated. Thanks in advance!