KittyScan is a crawler that scans the internet for Minecraft servers and collects data on them. This data is then used to provide statistics and insights on the Minecraft server community. KittyScan also acts as a honeypot to attract malicious actors and collect data on their activities. The goal of KittyScan is to provide valuable information to server owners and players to help them secure their servers and stay safe online.
The information collected by KittyScan is not shared with any third parties. We are not affiliated with Mojang or Microsoft in any way. We are not part of any griefing or hacking groups.
When joining a server, we try to send a message in the chat which recommends the server operator to enable the whitelist to protect their server from malicious actors. We explicitly stand in for Mojang to enable whitelist by default and to remove the player sample.
Changing away from the default port is enough to make your server invisible to KittyScan. KittyScan operates with the premise of "if an attempt has been made to hide the server, we will respect that".
You can also add "§b§d§f§d§b" to the end of your server's MOTD. This is invisible to your players. Upon seeing this the scanners will report the server as unreachable and all historic data related to it will be deleted.
To check if a server has offline mode enabled, KittyScan will join the server with the username "KittyScan". This will not happen often though. However since it is possible to change your (offline) username to anything, it is not guaranteed that a player named "KittyScan" is actually KittyScan. Since a Reddit thread about KittyScan was posted, I have found that at least 80 IPs, not affiliated with me, that have tried to connect to my honeypots. I also don't own the 'KittyScan' Mojang account.
The full list of accounts I use is:
- KittyScanNya
- KittyScanNyaNya
- KittyScanArchive
- KittyScan01
- KittyScanIPv6
To check if a server has its whitelist enabled, KittyScan will join the server with the username "KittyScanNya". This will not happen often though. If 'KittyScanNya' was able to join your server, please add a whitelist. If I can join your server, so can anyone else. And that someone else could be a malicious actor. See this guide on how to set up a whitelist. If you need help setting up a whitelist, you can join the KittyScan Discord server and ask for help.
The full list of accounts I use is:
- KittyScanNya
- KittyScanNyaNya
- KittyScanArchive
- KittyScan01
- KittyScanIPv6
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