Meet Hacker-Friendly Search Engine “Censys” Which is Powered by Google

Meet Hacker-Friendly Search Engine “Censys” Which is Powered by Google

If we look around we completely depend on internet of things. We use IoT devices in our daily life, we frequently encounter things that are connected to the internet. And those all could be found in two worlds- Real world and in an internet world.

We all know that whenever we need any information or data we simply search for it on the Google Search engine. However, do you know? there are also special search engines which help you to stay connected with IoT devices and Censys is one of them.

Censys is a public search engine that enables researchers to quickly ask questions about the hosts and networks that compose the Internet. In simple words, it is designed to locate any device that are carelessly plugged into the internet.

Censys search engine was released in the month of October 2013 by researchers at the University of Michigan. When Censys was newly launched, it managed to discover many secret facts and various vulnerabilities of the Internet-connected devices and is powered by the world’s biggest search engine Google.

Censys collects data on hosts and websites through daily ZMap and ZGrab scans of the IPv4 address space, in turn maintaining a database of how hosts and websites are configured. Researchers can interact with this data through a search interface, report builder, and SQL engine.

If you don’t know about ZMap then let me tell you ZMap is an open-source network scanner that enables researchers to easily perform Internet-wide network studies. With a single machine and a well-provisioned network uplink, ZMap is capable of performing a complete scan of the IPv4 address space in under 5 minutes, approaching the theoretical limit of ten gigabit Ethernet. It also finds if any machines on the internet having security vulnerabilities that should be fixed before being exploited by the hackers.

Zakir Durumeric, Researcher at the University of Michigan said “We have found everything from ATMs and bank safes to industrial control systems for power plants. It’s kind of scary”

You can find out more details about Censys architecture and functions. You need to visit the Censys team’s research paper. If you want to try censys than you must follow the full tutorial on how to use Censys.