1. Introduction: Intelligence Search Engines Are More Than Just “Asset Viewers”
Most people use ZoomEye primarily as an asset-scanning platform — entering an IP, domain, or port to check which services a host exposes to the Internet.
However, from a security research and offensive–defensive operations perspective, ZoomEye functions more like a search engine for cyberspace. It can help you locate online systems, components, frameworks — and even forgotten open-source tools, testing interfaces, and administrative panels that remain publicly accessible.
In other words, you can use it not only to find targets, but also to find tools exposed on the Internet.
2. Logic of Tool Discovery: From Protocol Fingerprints to Product Identification
ZoomEye’s query syntax is highly flexible. It supports filtering based on:
- banner / title / header fields
- Metadata such as port, country, service
- SSL/TLS certificates, iconhash (favicon hash), and HTTP fingerprints
When the objective is to identify tool-type assets exposed online, the following methodology applies:
These queries allow you to quickly identify tools that are publicly reachable but intended to be internal-only, revealing misconfigurations or accidental exposure in an organization’s attack surface.
3. From “Finding Tools” to “Building a Knowledge Graph”
Once you collect these results in bulk (e.g., via the ZoomEye API), you can process the data in a structured manner, such as:
- Extracting domains/IPs
- Grouping by SSL certificate fingerprints
- Aggregating by country/ASN
- Analyzing component versions and exposure timelines
This enables the construction of a “security tool ecosystem graph”, answering questions like:
- Which countries or industries expose Kibana most frequently?
- Which versions of SonarQube are most prone to public exposure?
- Which organizations are using the same SSL certificate in their testing environments?
This intelligence not only aids in attack surface research but also reflects the maturity distribution of security practices across organizations.
4. Example: Identifying Globally Exposed Vulnerability Scanning Systems
(title="OpenVAS" || title="Nessus") && country="CN"
Running this query in ZoomEye reveals a large number of exposed security scanning consoles, some of which lack authentication entirely.
Further filtering by port (e.g., port=9392 or port=8834) or combining with HTTP response indicators such as "HTTP/1.1 200 OK" can help isolate systems that are truly online and reachable.
5. Security Guidance and Compliance Boundaries
The purpose of these searches is intelligence analysis and defensive strategy, not intrusion or exploitation.
You can:
- Identify exposed assets within your own organization
- Study global deployment trends of security tools
- Build SOC training datasets for offense–defense exercises
You must not:
- Scan or validate vulnerabilities on unauthorized assets
- Share raw, non-sanitized results on public platforms
6. Conclusion
ZoomEye is not just a magnifying glass for security researchers, but also a window into the cyber ecosystem.
Learning to use it to “discover tools” reveals a more authentic, chaotic, and intriguing Internet —
a world full of misconfigurations, debugging interfaces, and forgotten assets.
“The boundary of information security is not the firewall; it is perception.”
I’ve heard that ZoomEye will also launch a Black Friday promotion. If you need it, now’s a good time to grab a subscription.
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