Question 1

What exactly is Boty?

Accepted Answer

Boty is a Swiss security research lab. The work splits into three parts: mapping what your organisation exposes to the public internet, simulating how an adversary would attack it, and tracking security advisories continuously so you find out about relevant exposure early. A fourth strand, applied computer vision, comes from the same engineering base.

Question 2

Who is Boty for?

Accepted Answer

Small and mid-sized organisations that depend on internet-facing systems but do not have a dedicated security team. If nobody in your company can produce a complete list of your public-facing assets from memory, that is the gap we close.

Question 3

Do you attack systems without permission?

Accepted Answer

No. Discovery uses public sources only and never touches your infrastructure. Anything that does touch your systems is authorised in writing beforehand, scoped to named assets, and stops when you say stop.

Question 4

How is an attack surface analysis different from a vulnerability scan?

Accepted Answer

A vulnerability scan checks hosts you already know about. An attack surface analysis starts from the outside with no inventory and reconstructs one — which is why it usually finds assets your own documentation does not list.

Question 5

What do I actually receive?

Accepted Answer

A written report with an asset inventory, findings ranked by realistic exploitability, evidence for each finding, and a remediation list in the order an attacker would work through it. Plus a session where we walk through it with the people who will do the fixing.

Question 6

Do you publish data about clients?

Accepted Answer

Never. Research published on this site is either about publicly observable infrastructure in aggregate, or about our own systems and methods. Client findings do not leave the engagement.

Question 7

What does it cost?

Accepted Answer

It depends on scope, and quoting a number before understanding the scope would be dishonest. Send a short description of your environment to info@boty.ch and you will get a scoped proposal rather than a price list.

Question 8

Do you work outside Switzerland?

Accepted Answer

The focus is Switzerland, because regulatory context and sector knowledge matter for the advisory work. Engineering and testing engagements elsewhere are possible.

Notes, research and explanations.

There is no black box

How OSINT actually works