PhilHornby
Senior Member
I was browsing the firewall log of my router, and noticed a failed attempt to access my VPN.
I followed up the IP address it came from (198.20.70.112) and apparently, it is something called http://shodan.io (198.20.64.0/18 is the range if you want to block it...)
I'd never heard of it, even though it's been around since 2013; in a nutshell, it's a search engine, "that lets the user find specific types of computers (routers, servers, etc.) connected to the internet using a variety of filters. .... This can be information about the server software, what options the service supports, a welcome message or anything else that the client can find out before interacting with the server."
You can find out what it currently knows about you, without creating an account - just modify the following search to use your IP address. https://www.shodan.io/host/xx.xx.xx.xx
In my case, it knew far more about my configuration than I consider healthy
So, if you're considering connecting your latest Picaxe project directly to the Internet, with maybe just a non-standard IP port as protection, I would strongly suggest that you don't!!
In my case, the stable door is now securely locked... and I've sent out a search party to look for the horse
Some interesting background reading: https://www.mikecarthy.com/offensive-security/shodan-worlds-dangerous-search-engine
and
http://www.zdnet.com/article/shodan-the-iot-search-engine-which-shows-us-sleeping-kids-and-how-we-throw-away-our-privacy/
I followed up the IP address it came from (198.20.70.112) and apparently, it is something called http://shodan.io (198.20.64.0/18 is the range if you want to block it...)
I'd never heard of it, even though it's been around since 2013; in a nutshell, it's a search engine, "that lets the user find specific types of computers (routers, servers, etc.) connected to the internet using a variety of filters. .... This can be information about the server software, what options the service supports, a welcome message or anything else that the client can find out before interacting with the server."
You can find out what it currently knows about you, without creating an account - just modify the following search to use your IP address. https://www.shodan.io/host/xx.xx.xx.xx
In my case, it knew far more about my configuration than I consider healthy
So, if you're considering connecting your latest Picaxe project directly to the Internet, with maybe just a non-standard IP port as protection, I would strongly suggest that you don't!!
In my case, the stable door is now securely locked... and I've sent out a search party to look for the horse
Some interesting background reading: https://www.mikecarthy.com/offensive-security/shodan-worlds-dangerous-search-engine
and
http://www.zdnet.com/article/shodan-the-iot-search-engine-which-shows-us-sleeping-kids-and-how-we-throw-away-our-privacy/
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