Use Censys to Find Seeds

Seeds are the known assets that identify your assets on the public-facing web.

In addition to seeds you manually add, Attack Surface Management (ASM) can help find seeds for your organization by searching registration data from Internet-artifact repositories. If you're an Enterprise customer, you can configure ASM to refresh all of your seed-related data every night.

This article covers:

• Situations in which ASM is particularly successful at finding seed data.
• How to use Censys to find seeds.
• How Enterprise customers can enable automated seed finding.

Success with ASM-found seeds

Using ASM to find seeds is most successful for these organizations:

• Large organizations with lots of publicly registered infrastructure.
• Large companies with lots of subsidiaries.
• Organizations with recent acquisitions, when an organization is inheriting a new attack surface.

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Warning

If your organization uses third parties to maintain privacy guards on registered Internet artifacts, ASM may encounter difficulty when trying to find your seeds.

Get started

Use the in-app tool use ASM to find your seeds.

Input your organization name

1. Go to the ASM web console, click your username, and click Add Seeds.

   

2. On the Input Data screen, enter your organization's name in the text box and select the correct match from the list. If your organization isn't listed, manually enter a domain name, starting with your flagship domain.

   

3. Click Next.

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Note

ASM only finds subsidiaries if an organization is selected by name. Using a domain name does not find subsidiaries or their seeds.

Review the Subsidiary Organization changes

This page shows changes to subsidiaries that Attack Surface Management found. An initial run only shows new subsidiaries. Please review any additions and decide whether you want Attack Surface Management to use these subsidiaries and include them in your organization's Internet presence. Review any removed subsidiaries and follow the link to our business data provider to explore more.

Click Declined in the applicable row to exclude a new subsidiary and its potential seeds. All new subsidiaries are included in the seed search unless you decline them.

Confirm the subsidiaries whose seeds and assets are to be included in this workspace, and click Next.

Review Registration Information changes

ASM uses two pieces of registration information to find seeds that may be registered to your organization: the Registrant's Organization name and Email Address.

1. From the Registrant Information page, examine the lists of new and removed organization names and email addresses found in registration records for netblocks and domains that you may own. An initial run only lists new registrants.

   

2. To view any seeds that result from accepting a new registrant, expand the row.

   

3. Review the changes listed in the Registrant Organization tab and the Registrant Email tab.

   

4. Confirm the registrant information to be used to find seeds for this workspace, and click Next.

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Warning

Censys recommends that you do not include Registrant Organization names and email addresses of third parties that your organization uses for privacy protection and registration upkeep. Their use may result in finding seeds that do not belong to your organization.

Review seed changes

1. Review newly found seeds and seeds no longer found.

   

2. Click Submit . After you submit your review, Attack Surface Management uses the seeds you provided and the seeds found to discover every asset in your attack surface.

   

You will receive an email when your attack surface is ready to review.

Automated seed finding

Enterprise customers can toggle Refresh automatically in the upper right of the Seed Data screen. When you enable this toggle, ASM refreshes all of your seed-related data every night.

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Note

Enterprise users with the Refresh toggle enabled only need to go through the steps outlined in this article when they receive an email informing them of a seed-related change available for review.