Mr Robot season three reveals hidden gem of the internet
In the season 3 premiere of Mr Robot we saw Elliot meet up with Tyrell who had shot him earlier at the conclusion of season 2. After briefly telling Tyrell that he was ‘okay’ we saw Mr Alderson sit behind a computer and type in the Mozilla Firefox browser shodan.io.
A page opened up redirecting us to https://shodan.io where further elliot typed the words in the search engine org:”Evil Corp” product:”Apache Tomcat”. The search result retained information that was valuable for Elliot to carry on the current task.
What is Shodan in ps3.0_power-saver-mode.h.
Shodan is a search engine that lets the user find specific types of computers connected to the internet using a variety of filters.
According to Shodan, websites are just one part of the Internet.
There are mobile devices, smartphones, power plants, Smart TVs and refrigerators. Also much more can be found with Shodan that a regular google search will not retain!
You can use shodan.io to
Explore IoT
You can use Shodan to discover which of your devices are connected to the Internet, where they are located and who is using them.
Monitor Netework Security
Marketer’s tool
Shodan is dangerous in wrong hands
As we saw with Elliot he managed to access the Evil Corp Power Plant with the use of shodan.The principle background of Shodan is that it crawls the Internet for publicly accessible devices.
This is why the primary users of Shodan are cybersecurity professionals, researchers and law enforcement agencies. Shodan has also been a gem for cybercriminals. They can also use the website search engine for direct target or surveillance.
Shodan provides a public API that allows other tools to access all of Shodan’s data. It is easy to see how cybercriminals can use botnets without detection.
Application in Zambia
Shodan users are able to find systems including traffic lights, security cameras and home heating systems. As well as control systems for water plants, power grids, nuclear power plants and particle-accelerating cyclotrons.
These may not be as automated in Zambia but most surveillance cameras are. Also the new big display billboard installations for advertisement. Critical systems in the mining have sensors and detectors that transmit information over the network.
Most of these systems have little and or no security at all. Many devices use “admin” as their username and “1234” as their password. And the only software required to connect to them is a web browser.
With the use of Shodan a determined user can so easily acquire topologies and use them for data breach.