The Dark Side Of The Internet: A Search Engine That Finds Unsecured Routers, Servers & A Whole Lot More

Developed by John Matherly, Shodan is a search engine designed to help users find certain pieces of software, determine which applications are most popular, identify anonymous FTP servers, or investigate new vulnerabilities and what hosts they could infect.

It also serves as a window into millions of unsecured online connections.

According to an article on CNN Money, Shodan runs nonstop, collecting data from approximately 500 million connected devices and services each month. Through a simple search on Shodan, a user can identify a number of systems that either have no security measures in place or generic passwords that can be hacked easily, leaving countless organizations open to hazardous attacks.

During last year’s DEF CON 20, independent security penetration tester Dan Tentler confirmed a number of unsecured systems he located using Shodan, including a car wash that could be turned on and off remotely, a hockey rink in Denmark that could be defrosted with a click of his mouse, and a traffic control system for an unnamed city that could be put in “test mode” with one command entry.

The biggest security flaw, says Matherly, is that many of these systems should not be connected to the Web, “Of course there’s no security on these things. They don’t belong on the Internet in the first place.” Citing that many systems can be controlled by a computer, IT departments will hook them up to a server, unintentionally making systems and devices available to anyone with an Internet connection.

The most common users on Shodan include security professionals, academic researches and law enforcement agencies. Users without a Shodan account will retrieve up to ten results per search, while account users get 50 results per search. To see everything Shodan can serve up, users are required to give more information about what they want to find and pay a fee.

Matherly admits to CNN Money that Shodan could be used for criminal purposes, but says most cybercriminals have access to botnets that achieve the same results.

Related Topics: Legal: Crawling & Indexing | Legal: Privacy | Legal: Security | Search & Society | Search Engines | Search Engines: Meta Search Engines | Search Features: Safety

About The Author: Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media's General Assignment Correspondent, and reports on the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles. See more articles by Amy Gesenhues

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Denver Search Engine Marketing-3 Steps to Improving Your Search Engine Rankings This article provides three ways to improve your search engine marketing.

Post a mystery vacation. What do you get when you cross a web site with superb content with it target audience?
Answer: Nothing good.
In addition, the site is search engine friendly and optimized.
I would like to use this column as a forum to address the three most pressing search issues s.
First) This is my understanding that search engines historically expected tags are the most important words on the page, and it is widely abused. Is it also has to put keywords in the tags if they are used in the title tag? In the past, it is true that the tags are very important in terms of SEO. While they still play a role, its value has declined over the years. I usually only recommend using tags where it makes sense to do so "in a position adjustment. Do not use too many tags on a page. If you want the text to be larger, as shown, then use lessPosition tags. Also, do not place entire paragraphs into heading tags. Do not forget to use them exclusively for positions. Proper use of the labels will not get in any hot water. Use the label that best represents the look that will. You also should not have too many repetitions of the label of each page, and you may be safe with 3.2 instances, I usually recommend no more than once.

 2) We have a sitemap for Google and Yahoo. Can be used to help us identify problems with our website and if so how to use it for this purpose?
(Note: I long to be treated sitemap XML) If you go to Tools Webmaster and Google to ensure that the site is "tested" Google will display errors with your sitemap (such as 404, and the etc..). Here you can set your preferred domain. I recommend setting to display a URL "WWW" version (with non-site version is also good, but using the website version is slightly better, with the most inbound links will probably use the web version). By using only one version, you can help focus page rank and ranking of the site and to help reduce duplicate content issues and website versions without appearing at the same time.
3) Our main pages seem to be in the regular results, but many of our pages in supplemental results. (These pages seem to be bound by the results of database search).
Further results will achieve rankings when there are very specific and limited resources demand associated with demand. Typically pages achieve supplemental status if they have very limited content, advertising is very heavy or have a large number of outbound links. Pages can receive supplemental status when they simply do not meet the high standards of other highly relevant pages on your own site. Google will soon rank the most relevant page on your site and if additional page is now less relevant content, a page will rank instead.
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