5 ms·
Show HN: Osint tool that finds exposed files on domains
hey guys, wanted to show one of my side projects i just made public.
the idea is basically another osint tool for pentesters and bug bounty
hunters. it watches certificate transparency logs and checks newly-seen
domains for exposed stuff like .env files, open .git dirs, config files,
db dumps and so on, and puts whatever it finds into a searchable db. you
just search a domain (or part of one) and see what's exposed.
it's read-only and free. one thing i've been thinking about adding is a
way to register for certain keywords and get notified when something new
shows up for that search.
would love to hear if you have other ideas for useful features, and also
ideas for how to reduce abuse of the data, since that's the part i'm least
sure about.
https://search.cerast-intelligence.com/ https://search.cerast-intelligence.com/
- cvadict 3mo agosearching for .gov reveals 0 matches... doubt
- sandeepkd 3mo agoMy guess is that they ran selective search on the domains which get registered with any registrar, thats the trigger to start the search. .gov domains are not managed by your typical registrar which is selling the domain registration information to all these downstream partners/scavengers (for lack of better word)
- jadamson 3mo agoThe OP says it's using CT logs, not new domain registrations. The approach you have in mind would not include subdomains and would be less likely to coincide with a new server being configured.
- sandeepkd 3mo agoYes CT is explicitly stated source which is why I qualified it with "Guess" for domain registration. There were couple reasons for that - 1. Quite a few websites in the search results where just on HTTP 2. The .gov sites do use public certificate authorities like digicert, verisign, amazon & letencrypt so they would have been captured unless they are removed explicitly And yes the domain registration would not include subdomains
- marysol5 3mo ago.gov.uk plenty of them use standard CA's manchester.gov.uk uses LE
- PatchRequest 3mo agoI manually blacklisted .gov from being crawled on my side. felt like it wasn't worth the potential trouble
- marysol5 3mo agoMeanwhile you crawl anybody else? .gov isn't magically any more able to take you to court than a private org
- sandeepkd 3mo agoIts interesting and not interesting at the same time based on some of the search results Almost all of them seem like home projects being deployed with ease in mind than security. The common thread seems to be the fact that most of them are phishing website, not sure if thats a business model to target here?
- technion 3mo agoThere's an astounding amount of .DS_Store showing up - I hadn't realised how common it apparently is for people to accidentally upload this.
- stingraycharles 3mo agoIt’s a terrible design from Apple to expose this metadata like this, it’s one of my biggest pet peeves.
- graemep 3mo agoKDE does something similar (but not as bad?) with .directory files.
- phoronixrly 3mo agoSo is this the crawler that has been constantly hammering all my applications searching for these files from the very second I first issue a TLS cert for them? Thanks to you I've had to put fail2ban on all my public-facing web servers... How about you be a good netizen and make it so people can request to be scanned and don't proactively do it, let alone constantly keep hammering them with requests?
- bblb 3mo agoI need to protect against the malicious good guys, the shodans of the world. Peeping inside your windows and trying your front door handles. Querying every string imaginable and port pinging all 65536 of them. And I need to protect against the actual criminals already inside my house looking for something to steal. Scouting out the easy target to setup their ransomwares.
- graemep 3mo agoLots of crawlers do this. I have never seen a webserver that does not get a variety of these from obviously different sources. Even just an ssh port will get a lot of malicious login attempts.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- phoronixrly 3mo agoI don't get what you mean by that. Everyone does it so it's OK? No - scanning without consent is abuse and anyone doing this is malicious regardless of what they tell themselves or anyone else.
- graemep 3mo agoI am not saying its OK. I am saying it is probably not this crawler that is hammering your site, and definitely not only this crawler. I specifically mentioned malicious attempts at ssh logins.
- keepamovin 3mo agoIn the early days of the web you could do a search on google like path:/etc/passwd Sometimes there were even shadow passwd files with the hashes exposed on the web. Crazy days.
- katemaster009 3mo agoI remember seeing examples like this in security courses. It was always surprising how many servers accidentally exposed sensitive files.
- keepamovin 3mo agoYes. Apache misconfigurations were a big one iirc. There were also basic auth files, databases and probably classified/proprietary information. Similar to how the telephone network used to have all kinds of unsecured entry points that people explored, leading to business phone systems, strange modems, and even international “trunk” lines and operator capabilities. It was a wild frontier
- AndReics 3mo agoi thought it was still possible! Luckily security has come a long way, but as shown by the project of OP, we are not quite there yet.
- tangsoupgallery 3mo ago[dead]
- tangsoupgallery 3mo ago[dead]
- tangsoupgallery 3mo ago[dead]
- Avery29 3mo agoNice tool. I’d like to understand what kinds of businesses the customers using this website are in.
- Elliott-Diy 3mo agoIs this just re-skinned leakix.net? One of my honeypots for them is showing the same results.
- PatchRequest 3mo agoNope, i crawl everything myself.
- Flaapjan 3mo ago[dead]
- raullu 3mo ago[dead]
- sub-e12 3mo agoAwesome tool, fast and right to the point!
- marysol5 3mo agoCT logs are funny, not enough people know about them. Whenever I speak to people they're shocked to know that "internal" subdomains get exposed through them.
- seethishat 3mo agoWildcard certs were somewhat useful for hiding this. Not sure that's still true.
- nhattruongadm 3mo ago[flagged]