# John Matherly (slim)

> John Matherly is founder. Shodan on Anchor Terminal, with grades, an about and public profiles.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/people/john-matherly/index.md (~850 tokens) · this version ~580 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/people/john-matherly/index.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/people/john-matherly/
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-03
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Founder.

John Matherly founded Shodan, the search engine for internet-connected devices, and unveiled it in 2009. His author page says he was born in Switzerland, moved to San Diego at 17, worked at the San Diego Supercomputer Center and studied bioinformatics at UC San Diego before building Shodan.

- X: https://x.com/achillean
- GitHub: https://github.com/achillean

## What John builds

- [Shodan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/shodan.md), graded E, 39.5/100, in Security intelligence. Shodan is a search engine for internet-connected devices. Its REST API returns the open ports, banners, certificates and known vulnerabilities of an IP address, searches the index by filter, scans ranges on demand and monitors networks for change. Founder, researched 2026-11-03.

## Questions

### Who is John Matherly?

John Matherly founded Shodan, the search engine for internet-connected devices, and unveiled it in 2009. His author page says he was born in Switzerland, moved to San Diego at 17, worked at the San Diego Supercomputer Center and studied bioinformatics at UC San Diego before building Shodan.

### What does Shodan make?

Anchor Terminal lists Shodan from Shodan.

### How are John's tools graded?

Shodan is graded E, 39.5 out of 100, on Anchor Terminal's benchmark, which scores every listing against the same checklist.

## Sources

- https://leanpub.com/u/shodan
- https://api.github.com/users/achillean
- https://github.com/achillean/shodan-python
- https://blog.shodan.io/
- https://www.shodan.io/
- https://developer.shodan.io/
- https://enterprise.shodan.io/
- https://help.shodan.io/
- https://rdap.identitydigital.services/rdap/domain/shodan.io

These are the people building the tools we list, named for their public role in the company or project behind a listing, from public pages, with the date it was researched.