Shodan Search Engine Overview: Knight of the Dark Web

Shodan is an all-new search engine. Unlike its contemporaries, it doesn’t crawl only the visible web. The visible web or the surface web is the part in which search engine bots crawl and index. However, the Shodan search engine has access to peripherals, machines, and several components of the Darknet.

Shodan search engine: Knight of the Dark Web.

Shodan search engine can even allow its users access to traffic signals or nuclear power plants! There was a similar A.I module in the PC game System Shock 2 named Shodan which made gamers run for their lives. So, taking a hint from that John Matherly, a computer engineer has created the Shodan search engine.

It can find a large number of devices connected to the internet.  Anyone with an internet connection can access those devices which show up as unprotected on the Shodan results.

“When people don’t see stuff on Google, they think no one can find it.
That’s not true. – John Matherly”

Shodan has information on 500 million devices that are connected to the internet! The kind of security failures discovered with Shodan are so wide-scale that anything and everything that is connected to the Internet can be targeted if it’s not running proper security measures!

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Capacity and Impacts of Shodan Search Engine:

If it falls into the wrong hands then the impact can be beyond thought.
A little example to demonstrate its power is one by Dan Tentler, who showcased how Shodan could be used to find control systems for garage doors, pressurized water heaters, and coolers working on evaporation.

“He in his endeavours found out that a whole car wash could be turned ON/OFF. An ice hockey rink in Denmark that he could melt with a single click. A city’s entire traffic module was connected to the Internet and with one command entry it could be put to “TEST MODE”. Also in his findings was the control system for a Hydroelectric power plant in France which had 2 turbines with a capacity of 3 MW each! “

And that’s some serious power! The reason that such things aren’t secure in the first place is that security is thought of later. The engineers and designers believe such devices to be hard to find. But now with the Shodan search engine, it doesn’t seem so.

The conclusion is that right now Shodan is exclusively used for good purposes. Like finding worldwide security holes and patching them etc. Matherly had already completed Shodan 3 years ago.

The current number of searches is limited to 10 results without an account and 50 for someone who is logged in.

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Users of Shodan Search engine :

The Shodan search engine is being used by security, penetration testers, law agencies, and academic researchers. People with malicious intentions can also use it because after a payment the whole of Shodan is accessible.

The biggies already have large networks of BOTNETS to do what Shodan does. But the starting ones can still be used to spread terror. It should be limited to the public as of now.

That’s what we at Inspire2rise believe.
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Aditya Nath Jha

Aditya Nath Jha is an Engineer from New Delhi, India. His areas of interest include Gadgets, WordPress, speed optimization & latest technology. When he is not busy blogging he loves to write poetry, compose his own songs and has a taste for music! Find him on Facebook, Twitter, Linked in, Instagram. And watch his videos on YouTube.