Measuring Discrepancies in Attack Surfaces Generated by Internet Intelligence Platforms

Price, Martin and Austin, Edward and Smith, Paul and Race, Nicholas (2025) Measuring Discrepancies in Attack Surfaces Generated by Internet Intelligence Platforms. In: ACM SIGCOMM Posters and Demos '25: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2025 Posters and Demos :. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), New York, pp. 82-84. ISBN 9798400720260

Abstract

In response to the growing threat of cyber-attacks, there is a demand to understand modern, complex attack surfaces. To achieve this, different Internet Intelligence Platforms (IIPs) can be used. In this work, we show there are differences in the attack surfaces created using three IIPs: Shodan, Censys, and ZoomEye. Our results show these discrepancies manifest in the size and temporal characteristics of the identified attack surfaces. This could lead to organisations and decision makers potentially being misinformed about their true attack surface. These findings point towards the need for further research focused on understanding these discrepancies.