The pair wrote a series of scripts, small computer programs, that interrogated the Shodan search engine.

BBC: US government warns over vulnerable control systems

Shodan was created to log machines connected to the internet in the same way Google logs webpage contents.

BBC: US government warns over vulnerable control systems

Telecomix, a loose-knit team of international hacktivists, had been scanning the Syrian Internet in a massive sweep, dividing 700, 000 target connections among its members in Germany, France and the U.S., probing for hackable devices with software tools like Nmap and Shodan.

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