System shock?

well, no, but a familiar name for fans of the game:)

http://www.shodanhq.com/

SHODAN is a search engine that lets you find specific computers (routers, servers, etc.) using a variety of filters. Some have also described it as a public port scan directory or a search engine of banners.

Web search engines, such as Google and Bing, are great for finding websites. But what if you're interested in finding computers running a certain piece of software (such as Apache)? Or if you want to know which version of Microsoft IIS is the most popular? Or you want to see how many anonymous FTP servers there are? Maybe a new vulnerability came out and you want to see how many hosts it could infect? Traditional web search engines don't let you answer those questions.

So what does SHODAN index then? Good question. The bulk of the data is taken from 'banners', which are meta-data the server sends back to the client. This can be information about the server software, what options the service supports, a welcome message or anything else that the client would like to know before interacting with the s

I've been reading up on this and I have to say I'm in two minds. On the one hand, its great. Its a fantastic resource and it will make pentesting the perimeter that little bit easier. (or at least the footprinting phase will be quicker )

its not complete yet so not all country codes are included so its only going to get more and more useful as time goes by.

On the other hand... is this a step too far? now you can search through all the exploit databases shodan connects to , find an exploit you like and can insert your own payload into (or use as is) and *then* go and find a suitable victim. Personally, I think I'd be happier, or at least more comfortable if they didnt have the link to exploit search on the same page..

With all the furore over google "stealing" wi-fi information, I wonder why there has been relatively few ripples about this thing scanning ports and grabbing banners....