Raccoon's Port Scanner

Inspiration

I wanted to create a tool that blends network with real world vulnerability. Most basic port scanners stop at identifying open ports, but I wanted to take it further and tell the user what those ports mean for security.

What it does

• Find all open TCP ports.
• Grav service banners.
• Identify known vulnerabilities using a local CVE database or live CVE API lookup.
• Export the results to a structured JSON report.

How I built it

I built the port scanner in Python using the following:

• socket for port scanning and banner grabbing.
• requests to pull CVE data from CIRCL's public API.
• colorama for clean, color coded output.
• Flask to simulate a vulnerable service for testing.
• A small local JSON CVE database to support offline use.

Challenges we ran into

• Accurately parsing service banners.
• Ensuring compatibility with macOS Python and terminal environments.
• Handing slow or unresponsive ports without blocking the entire scan.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Built a working scanner that grabs banners and identifies CVEs.
• Created a simulated test environment using Flask for reliable demos.
• Packaged everything cleanly with outputs and an exportable report.

What I learned

• How to work with low level network sockets in Python.
• How banner grabbing and CVE enumeration work.
• How to use APIs.

What's next for Raccoon's Port Scanner

• Add multi threading to increase speed.
• Add UDP port scanning and more like FTC, SMTP, etc.
• Build a front end for the app.
• Integrate machine learning to flag abnormal services/ports.

Built With

• argparse
• clorama
• flask
• json
• python
• requests
• socket