How to Seed the Censys ASM Platform
The Importance of Seeds
Seeding the Censys Attack Surface Management platform with known assets allows you to make the most of its powerful scanning and attributing capabilities.
With provided assets to start from, our platform can map the full extent of your digital footprint across the entire Internet and discern the perimeter of your network with accuracy.
Want to use Censys to find your seeds? Follow this guide.
Assets You Can Add as Seeds
The following assets make great seeds. Not all of the options listed below are necessary or even applicable to your organization, so they are listed from most to least common.
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Domains - Domain names identify DNS administrative zones, are registered with a registrar, and often have name servers or mail servers associated with them.
Example: censys.io
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Other names - Other DNS names identify services (e.g., me.censys.io) and map to one or more IP addresses where the services are running. These can be added as a "Domain" type.
Example: app.censys.io
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IP addresses - IP addresses are a numerical label assigned to a device or service connected to the Internet in order to identify and reach it.
Example: 8.8.8.8
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CIDR Blocks - A CIDR is a range of sequential IP addresses (in CIDR notation) that has been assigned to an organization for their use.
Example: 8.8.8.0/24
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ASNs - An autonomous system number is a numerical identifier of a connected group of one or more blocks of IP addresses that have been assigned to an organization.
Example: 123
Add a Seed in the App
On the Dashboard panel, click on your username icon in the top right corner and select Add Seeds from the dropdown menu.

There are two steps to add seeds:
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Input data
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Verify and submit
Input Data
On the input step, enter your assets in the text box, or upload a CSV or text file.
After you’re done, click the *Input Data button.

Verify and Submit
On the verification step, resolve any issues and verify the correctness of all of your assets in each section. Then, click Submit Data.

After submission, you’ll see a confirmation page.

Add a Seed via API
You can also add seeds with our REST API by making the following call:
POST ++https://app.censys.io/api/v1/seeds
Example Request Body
{ "seeds": [ { "type": "ASN", "value": 0, "label": "emeahq" }, { "type": "IP_ADDRESS", "value": "1.1.1.1", "label": "dns" }, { "type": "DOMAIN_NAME", "value": "example.com", "label": "main" }, { "type": "CIDR", "value": "127.0.0.0/16", "label": "internal" } ] }
To see more seed management methods, visit to our API documentation.
View Seed Data
To view your organization’s seed data, click the Inventory item from the top navigation bar and select Seed Data from the dropdown menu.

The page opens by default to seeds you’ve provided.

The two cards at the top of the page enumerate the total number of assets provided to the Censys platform via seeds, and the total number of assets discovered by the platform, with links to those lists.
The table on the bottom of the page lists all the seed data added to the platform, with information that includes the asset type, the value, the source (that is, the interface used to add the seed), and a label, if given by the user.
If you think you might be missing some seeds, you can use Censys to find them!
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