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Search Q&A

Got a question about Search, queries, or data? Ask it here!

  • 8 Topics
  • 13 Replies
8 Topics
MattK_Censys
MattK_CensysCensys Community Manager
asked in Search Q&A
Can I specify a historical date for my search?

We often hear this question from search users, and the response is at the moment you cannot.Searches run in the web UI and API are always for hosts and virtual hosts as they are currently known.However, on any host page, you can select Host History to see a chronology of events and go back to a historical view, but searches using history are not supported. 

1
L
26 days ago
MattK_Censys
MattK_CensysCensys Community Manager
posted in Search Q&A
Cool Query of the Week for August 14, 2024: HTTP sites with an executable file listed in their index file

This week I’m highlighting a query that you can use to find sites that have an executable file in their index. Hosts that are returned by this query could be worth further investigating to determine whether they are being used for malicious purposes. This query uses regex to include a number of different file extensions but you can use a simpler, regex-free version of it with wildcards or specific executable file names. services: (http.response.html_title:"index of" and http.response.body=/.*\.(js|exe|app|vb|scr).*/) If you have identified a specific executable file of interest (for example, nc.exe), you could use that for the value for the services.http.response.body field, as Matthew from Embee Research did in his excellent guide to tracking malware with Censys. This is part of a regular series of posts in which we highlight useful, interesting, and otherwise cool queries for use with Censys Search and ASM. If you have any questions, similar queries, or custom versions of this week’s

2
MattK_Censys
1 month ago
J
jowestNew Participant
asked in Search Q&A
List of towns in a county?

Hi,Is there perhaps a list of towns to check in a specific country, if there is where can I find it.Please let me know.Thanks!

4
J
1 month ago
Z
ZebazNew Participant
asked in Search Q&A
Searching services within history of large number of hosts

I have a use case where I want to search for historical activity of services on a large number of hosts (200k+)Currently this is my approach (using the API):Search for hosts For each host: get changed events within a time period For each changed event: check if the event potentially matches the service criteria (e.g. port or protocol) For each of these candidate events: get host details at the candidate event timestamp Extract service details from response This works, but is quite involved and consumes a lot of API credits.Did anyone find a better way  to query the service history of multiple hosts?Thanks!

2
Z
1 month ago
Mark Thomasson
Mark ThomassonNew Participant
asked in Search Q&A
Integration of Censys with various Threat Intel Platforms

would like to know who might be in charge of technology partnerships so users can use Censys with their favorite  Threat Intel platform sadly Censys is not part of my favorite TIP - Open CTI - https://filigran.notion.site/OpenCTI-Ecosystem-868329e9fb734fca89692b2ed6087e76 just sayin

3
pratenc
1 month ago
MattK_Censys
MattK_CensysCensys Community Manager
asked in Search Q&A
How can I find hosts in a specific country running a specific software?

This is another series of posts I’ll be making that cover basic use-cases and building blocks for Censys Search--this one is called “How can I...” We’ll start out with “How can I find hosts in a specific country running a specific software?“ Here’s an example query that returns hosts in Russia detected running gSOAP: location.country=Russia and services.software.product: gSOAP This query uses the location.country field to set a geographic boundary and the services.software.product field to identify the software in focus. Another potential starting point for this would be to start with simply the location.country=Russia query and then run a report on those results that uses services.software.product as the breakdown field. This will provide you with a window into the types of software products that have been detected on hosts in Russia, allowing you to identify software of interest and perform follow-up queries.

0
MattK_Censys
2 months ago
R
rudraNew Participant
asked in Search Q&A
XSS related question

I have been searching for XSS and other vulnerability on multiple platforms and I have found that most of them filter it. However, in login forms, if I include “<” or “>” [without quotes], the text in between was not shown in the error message. Here is what I typed in the username: Admin <script>alert('xss')</script> HelloHere is what the error message shown: Error: The username Admin Hello is not registered on this site. If you are unsure of your username, try your email address instead.I think that this is due to the input sanitizer, or it might be something else that idk.Has anyone encountered such situation before?

1
B
2 months ago
MattK_Censys
MattK_CensysCensys Community Manager
asked in Search Q&A
In the Censys Search Language, how is the equal sign operator (=) different from the colon (:)?

When introducing users to the Censys Search Language, this is a question we often hear.The equals sign means that the value provided as search criteria for a field must be an exact match in totality to the value stored in Censys for the host to be considered a hit. The colon is a “fuzzy” match operator.To illustrate this, note the differences between results when searching forservices.http.response.html_title="200 Success" services.http.response.html_title:"200 Success"The first query returned 0 results at the time of this posting as it was looking for exact matches to “200 Success” in the HTML title. The second returned 3 results and included services with responses “200 - Success”.

0
MattK_Censys
2 months ago

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