Introducing zMap-as-a-Service

We recently introduced a major innovation into the industry, zMap-as-a-Service. After months of research, we found that those who conduct light port scans for research or scraping purposes are often neglected. After all, we, for a short while, had been one of those companies trying to avoid customers with this kind of use-case. Let's go through what this tool allows the industry to now do, and why this isn't usually something providers want on their networks.

One of the biggest downsides of this kind of usage is IP Reputation; as you conduct more and more network scans, although it's not illegal, many providers have set automated abuse reports and other forms of automated reporting (such as SpamHaus or AbuseIPDB). This often results in your IP range being blocked from major endpoints, making your network less usable for customers running tasks that don't result in frequent abuse reports. So when running a world scan, you'll likely get hundreds of reports, most of which are automated.

Key Benefits of zMap-as-a-Service

• Internet Census: Comprehensive scans can serve as a form of internet census, providing valuable data about the types and distributions of devices and services globally. This information can be useful for academic research and policy-making.
• Botnet Detection: Scanning can help identify the presence of botnets by locating compromised devices and their associated open ports, contributing to efforts in mitigating large-scale attacks.
• Vulnerability Research: Security researchers can identify unpatched or outdated services across the internet, leading to the discovery of new vulnerabilities and the development of better security measures.
• Network Abuse Detection: Scanning can help identify malicious activity or misconfigured services that could be exploited by attackers, aiding in the identification of compromised systems.
• Data for Machine Learning Models: The data collected from global scans can be used to train machine learning models for anomaly detection, intrusion detection systems, and other cybersecurity applications.
• Internet Health Monitoring: Scanning can help assess the overall health of the internet by identifying issues such as widespread misconfigurations or services that are no longer maintained.