Top 8 Search Engines for Hackers

Search engines help locate the desired resources on the internet. Hackers are also using different search engines extensively to complete security assessments. This blog talks about the Top 8 Search Engines for available Hackers. Most of them are free, but some charge a minimal amount for usage.

Top 8 Search Engines for Hackers

Feature	Shodan	BinaryEdge	Censys	Hunter	IVRE	Spyse	Onyphe	Google
Search Scope	Global	Global	Global	Email Addresses	Network	Global	Global	Web
Data Collection	IoT devices, services	Internet-wide services	Internet-wide services	Email Related	Network Traffic	Internet-wide services	Internet-wide services	Web Pages
API Access	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	No
Cost	Freemium, paid plans	Freemium, paid plans	Freemium, paid plans	Freemium, paid plans	Open source	Freemium, paid plans	Freemium, paid plans	Free
Search Filters	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available
Data Visualization	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Threat Intelligence	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Limited	Yes	Yes	Limited
Historical Data	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Limited	Yes	Yes	Limited
API Rate Limits	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Not Applicable

(1) Shodan

Shodan is popular for the identification of IoT infrastructure across the globe. If you are a security analyst and performing pentest on the IoT infrastructure, Shodan is a must-have tool in your arsenal. This tool provides a basic search for free, but if you want to use it further, you need to pay a minimal amount to get the subscription.

(2) Binaryedge

Binaryedge is a search engine for acquiring, analyzing, and classifying a company's data available on the internet. This tool provides a basic search for free, but if you want to use it further, you need to pay a minimal amount. This tool is available in the Free, Starter, Business, and Enterprise editions.

(3) Censys

Censys is used to identify subdomains of the IT infrastructure. Censys lists out all the available subdomains for the attacker. Attackers collect those IPs and start fresh recon to identify vulnerabilities.

(4) Hunter

Hunter is helpful when a security analyst wants to extract an official email id related to the company.

(5) IVRE

IVRE is an open-source network recon framework that includes the famous port scanner tool Nmap. This tool helps in parsing output from the results of tools such as Argus, Zeek, etc. You can use the CLI tools, the Python API, or the Web interface to browse the scanning results.

(6) Spyse

Spyse is a web-based tool to provide information about the target. Information collected in the previous step is usually used for penetration testing and cyber investigations. This tool is a paid tool and is available based on a time-limit subscription.

(7) Onyphe

The web-based search engine tool is used to collect geo-information, active scans, lookups of threat lists, etc.

(8) Google

Google is the ultimate source of knowledge to gain information about anything available in the universe. If you are looking for existing or new vulnerabilities, a lot of Google dorks are available to identify problems with the application.