Finding Raspberry Pi Webservers with Shodan
Something I like doing every once in a while when bored, is searching Shodan for Raspberry Pi webservers. It's kind of cool, because a lot of these are just regular folks hosting a web server on a Raspberry Pi with whatever the heck they felt like throwing on it. Sometimes that's a basic website with photos. Other times, it's a half-finished concept that they probably never got around to doing anything with and forgot about. I think the coolest part is seeing a part of the internet that looks like the wild west. Just things that are built and aren't necessarily done by a professional developer with a zillion dollar marketing team.
Interestingly, a lot of these are developers and people who just want to build their HTML chops. Probably not a bad way to do it, though I'm not the type of person who would feel great about hosting my own webserver at home. There's really nothing wrong with it, I just don't like the idea of adding that sort of exposure to the public internet if I can just pay someone a bit to host it for me. I know it feels like a lot, but I think this is one of those times where I don't mind paying a bit more to know it's hosted on someone else's infrastructure and they know how to manage and protect it better than I do.
Anyhow, searching for Raspberry Pis on the internet is fun. You will need a Shodan account. I'm not sure if it works with the free tier, but I suppose you can try it out.
I enter the following search query: port:80,443 -40* -444 -50* "Raspbian"
This searches for services on port 80 and 443 while eliminating 400 errors (404, etc) and 444 errors as well as 500 errors. It also looks for "Raspbian." It's not perfect, as Raspbian isn't strictly limited to the Pi and the Pi isn't limited to Raspbian. Still, it gives a good overall view.
Just some fun finds
Fun times
Yeah. It's nothing super-awesome, but I enjoy seeing what I can find. If ya do search around, just don't be a douche and mess with people's stuff. It's cool to see what's out there, but just browse and be on your way.
There is so much out there, and Shodan gives us a bit of visibility into that. I think it's a lot of fun to explore. Go out there and see what you can find.