Exclude Assets

The Censys Attack Surface Management (ASM) attribution algorithm maximizes the number of discovered assets by connecting assets to each other using multiple methods.

Sometimes, discovered assets are brought into your inventory incorrectly. Other times, you may want to curate the items in your inventory to reflect a subset of your attack surface.

For example, if you see an IP address, TLS certificate, or domain name that you do not want in your inventory, you can exclude it.

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Caution

Excluding an asset has a ripple effect. Other assets whose path includes the one you excluded are also removed. Those assets can reappear later if Attack Surface Management finds them through other paths.

To effectively remove false positives, follow the discovery path back to the highest parent node you do not want and remove that one.

Exclusion options

Two exclusion options are available:

• Exact Match Exclusion: These assets are excluded from your inventory and are not used to discover other assets.
• Subdomain Match Exclusions list: These names are used for pattern matching to prevent any subdomains from entering your inventory.

You can add names to one or both lists to meet your organization’s needs.

Exclude a single asset

1. From an asset's Details page, click Remove in the upper right.

   

2. If the asset that you are removing is a name, you are prompted about subdomains of that name.

   

3. If you choose to prevent subdomains, the excluded name is also added to a Subdomain Match Exclusion list that prevents any subdomain from ever being added to the inventory, regardless of the discovery path.

Exclude multiple assets

1. To exclude multiple assets from your organization, select each one on the Inventory page.

   

2. From the Actions list, click Remove Selection.

View excluded assets

1. You can view assets that you excluded from your attack surface by selecting Excluded Assets.

   

2. There are two tabs on the Excluded Assets page:

   1. Exact Match Exclusion list: Items on this list are excluded from your inventory and are not used to discover other assets. To meet your organization's needs, a name can be added to one or both lists.

   2. Subdomain Match Exclusions list: Names on this list are used for pattern matching to prevent any of its subdomains from entering your inventory.

      

Restore an excluded asset

If you decide to restore an asset to your collection or keep it on one list and not the other, click the Restore link on the right side of the table in the asset row.