Heimlane Scout Bot

Passive security assessment bot

You found us in your logs.

Heimlane Scout Bot examines publicly available information about domains to assess their external security posture. Everything we check is data that's already visible to anyone on the internet; we just read it more carefully.

The difference is intent. Attackers perform this exact reconnaissance as their first step, looking for weak spots to exploit. If Scout Bot finds issues, chances are someone with less friendly intentions already has too. We'd rather you find out from us.

Our User-Agent

Heimlane-Scout-Bot/1.0 (+https://heimlane.com/products/scout/bot; scoutbot@heimlane.com)

Our IP Address (placeholder, will be updated in due time)

203.0.113.50

Scout Bot is under active development. During this phase, it may have reached your infrastructure from a different IP address. If you spot our User-Agent string from an unlisted IP, that's most likely us; feel free to reach out if you have questions.

What Scout Bot does - and doesn't

What Scout Bot checks

  • DNS configuration Email authentication records such as SPF, DKIM and DMARC, along with other DNS hygiene indicators that help prevent spoofing and impersonation.
  • Certificate health TLS/SSL certificate validity, configuration, and related best practices for encrypted communications.
  • Security headers HTTP response headers and web server configuration that contribute to a hardened web presence.
  • Reputation Whether your domain or associated assets appear in known breach, phishing, or malware databases.

What Scout Bot does not do

  • Attempt to log in, authenticate, or guess credentials
  • Submit forms, upload files, or modify any data
  • Exploit vulnerabilities or perform penetration testing
  • Access anything that isn't already publicly visible
  • Generate significant load on your infrastructure

Scout Bot's capabilities evolve continuously. The checks above are illustrative, not exhaustive; we may examine any publicly available information related to your domain's security posture.

A typical scan makes fewer than 20 HTTP requests to your domain, rate-limited to a maximum of 10 requests per 10 seconds. Most of the work happens through DNS lookups and TLS handshakes that never touch your application layer.

robots.txt

Scout Bot does not follow robots.txt directives. Unlike search engine crawlers, Scout Bot does not index or reproduce your content; it examines technical security indicators on publicly accessible endpoints.

It's worth noting that robots.txt Disallow entries can work against you. They tell anyone reading them, including attackers, exactly which paths you consider sensitive, effectively providing a map of where to look. Excluding security assessment tools from robots.txt does not improve your security posture; it may actually weaken it.

That said, reading your robots.txt does not mean we will be crawling every single location you've put in there. Attackers will.

Where the data goes

Heimlane is a European company. All scan data is processed and stored exclusively within the European Union on infrastructure we operate ourselves. We don't sell scan data, we don't share individual results with anyone, including our own suppliers, and we don't use them for targeted advertising. Full details are in our privacy policy.

Questions or opt-out

If you'd like to know more about Scout Bot activity on your domain, or if you'd like to exclude your domain from future scans, email us at s c o u t b o t [ a t ] h e i m l a n e [ d o t ] c o m.