Help & Tool Guide

A quick reference for what each PacketHunt tool does, and why a few of them ask you to sign in first.

Why some tools ask you to sign in

The active scan tools reach out and send real traffic to whatever target you enter — from this server's IP address. Left wide open, that would let anyone use PacketHunt as a free, anonymous scanning relay against third parties. To keep that from happening, those tools require a one-time email verification (a sign-in link):

You enter your email and we send a one-time sign-in link; clicking it verifies you. Disposable / temporary inboxes are rejected, which filters out casual abuse.
We don't store your email. We keep only a one-way hash and a masked form (e.g. j***@example.com) — enough to tell users apart in the abuse log, never the full address.
We never market to you or share it. It's purely an anti-abuse check.
One verification keeps you signed in on that device for 30 days.

On the home page a padlock marks the tools that need sign-in. Once you're verified it turns green and opens , and the header shows Signed in. Everything else is open to everyone, no account needed.

Network Tools

⌨️

Command Line Tests 🔒 Sign-in

Runs ping, dig, nmap, a TLS cipher scan and an MTR path trace against a host you specify — the classic terminal diagnostics, from the server, in one form.

🌐

DNS Checker

Resolves a name across six public resolvers (Google, Cloudflare, Quad9 and others) side by side, so you can spot split-horizon answers, propagation lag or filtering differences.

🛰️

BGP Lookup

For an IP, prefix or ASN: the origin AS, RPKI validity, the upstream transit chain, and the full prefix inventory an organisation announces.

✅

Network Validation 🔒 Sign-in

Repeats connectivity checks (ping / HTTP / TLS) over several iterations to confirm a target is reliably reachable, not just up for one lucky packet.

📡

Basic Port Scan 🔒 Sign-in

A quick TCP port sweep of a single host or a small CIDR range to see what's listening.

Security Tools

🔎

IP Intelligence

Geolocation, ASN & ownership, reverse DNS, Shodan exposure and a composite IP-quality/risk score for up to 50 IPs or hostnames at once, with CSV export.

🔓

Exposure Tester 🔒 Sign-in

Opens the real protocol handshake for each service (not just a SYN), so it can tell a genuinely reachable service from a port an application firewall merely answers on.

📜

Certificate Scanner 🔒 Sign-in

Sweeps a subnet and collects the TLS certificate from every host that responds, with an A–F cipher/protocol grade and the negotiated cipher for each — handy for inventorying certs and spotting weak TLS or expiries across a range.

🏅

SSL Server Test 🔒 Sign-in

Grades a public server's TLS configuration — protocols, cipher strength, certificate, chain trust and HSTS — with an A+ to F score, in the spirit of SSL Labs. Test one host for a full deep cipher enumeration, or up to 20 at once as a batch table you can expand per host.

🔧

SSL Certificate Tools

Decode a certificate to plain-English details, and convert between PEM, DER, P7B and PFX. Paste or upload — nothing leaves your browser except the bytes to convert.

Proxy & Web Tools

🛡️

Validate Proxy Enforcement

Opens iframes to known category test sites to show whether your Zscaler / Netskope (or other) web policy actually blocks them from where you're sitting.

📤

DLP Exfiltration Test

Attempts a sample upload of fake credit-card / SSN / medical data over HTTP and HTTPS to see whether your DLP blocks it. The sample content is discarded on arrival — never stored.

🏷️

Website Category Check

Looks up the content category and risk rating for up to 25 URLs at once.

📍

My IP Info

Your public IP, geolocation, request headers and proxy detection — exactly as the server sees you.

⚡

HTTP/2 vs HTTP/1.1

Detects the protocol your connection negotiates, then races HTTP/2 against HTTP/1.1 head to head — if HTTP/2 loses, a proxy is likely downgrading you.

API Access

🔑 Want programmatic access?

Many of the lookups here (BGP, DNS, IP intelligence, DNSBL, header grading, email security, cert scanning and more) can be driven by an API key with per-function scopes, so you call only what you've been granted.

Keys are issued by hand, on request only — there's no self-serve signup. If you'd like one, use the 💬 Feedback button on any page and leave a comment telling me which tools you'd like to call and roughly how you'll use them. I review each request personally and reply with a scoped key.

Questions or something not behaving? Use the 💬 Feedback button on any page.
PacketHunt is a free diagnostics toolkit — please only scan hosts and networks you're authorised to test.