Rather Than Ask Google, Let’s Ask Shodan

Rather Than Ask Google, Let’s Ask Shodan

A demo of the methods defined in this article is defined here.

Which country has most Apache servers? Ans: Mexico

Forget Google! That’s so 20th Century!

The future is Shodan … which is searching the Internet for every device which can be seen on the Internet.

If it’s Webcams, Industrial Control Systems, Web servers, Databases, Traffic Light Control Systems… and it connects to the Internet … it’ll be on Shodan. So here’s a quick demo of using the command line tool:

So let’s ask Shodan a few questions …

I’m in the UK, which place has most data?

Ans: London and Gloucester

We are increasingly surrounded by data. But where is it? Well increasingly it is in data centres and in the Cloud, and the place to find the location of publicly facing databases is Shodan. So let’s do a quick scan of the UK, and find out the place which has the most MySQL databases:

Overall there are 69,850 MySQL databases registered to the UK (compared with Germany which has 150,433). London leads the way with over 70% of all MySQL databases which appear on Shodan. But Gloucester takes 2nd place. Why? Well, it’s the home of the UK base of 1&1, and who have a significant footprint in data infrastructures:

But when we take population into account and look at the number of MySQL databases per 100K of the population, we see that Gloucester, Wells, London, Canterbury and Liverpool come through strongly:

But how does the UK fair against the other members of the EU? Well, Germany, Poland and France come out top, with Germany hosting nearly a quarter of all the MySQL servers in the EU:

For its population, Ireland punches well above its weight.

Which Are The Amazing Data Countries of the EU?

Ans: Poland, Netherlands, Estonia, Ireland and Lithuania?

Data is King! Let’s call this the Information Age, and where our Industrial Age has past.

Wherever there is data you will find smart people and new companies being created. While increasingly our data is being stored in the public cloud — such as in Amazon and Azure, let’s do a quick scan of Shodan for MySQL, and see where there is most activity in each of the EU member states.

Well, for this, Germany, Poland, France, UK and Netherlands come out top:

Germany accounts for around one-quarter of all the MySQL data instances, and around 1-in-5 are in Poland. But which countries punch above their weight, and have a high impact for their data infrastructures related to their population?

Which UK Cities Has Most Tech Impact?

Ans: Manchester, Swansea and Aberdeen

Well, Shodan tells all. A quick search on Shodan reveals that London, Manchester and Leeds lead the way in terms of the number of devices that connect to the Internet:

But when it comes to the city with the most devices for 100 people, it is Manchester, Swansea, and Aberdeen that lead the way:

Manchester has 28 devices connected to the Internet for ever 100 people in the city. My own city — #Edinburgh — doesn’t even make the Top 20. Tut, tut!

When it comes to Web cameras, Liverpool and Southampton shoot up the table:

and where Southampton, Oxford and Manchester all have more than 50 web cameras per 100K of the population:

Conclusions

Small and eager countries, with a young population, will be the places that ideas can quickly grow. Well done to Poland, the Netherlands, Estonia, Ireland and Lithuania … you are taking on the World … and winning! Our countries need to create the jobs of the future, and get our kids to see that the future for them is in data. We increasingly need to drive our economy and countries such as Estonia, Ireland and Lithuania see the advantages of focusing on technology for their skills base, and other countries need to follow, otherwise just having a large (and aging) population will not be enough to compete in this new data-driven world.

Go tell your schools to get their kids switched onto this new world. In the UK, if we are not teaching Data Science and Cyber Security properly to all of our kids within the next three years, we will have lost another generation. If we are still teaching them the difference between a bitmapped image and a vector one, we are still teaching from the 1980s.