Frequently asked questions
Several of these answers are “no”. Those are the ones worth reading — the cost of finding out on site is a great deal higher than the cost of finding out here.
The basics
- What is CySecTek?
- A network toolkit for Windows. It identifies which switch port your machine is plugged into by reading the switch's own LLDP and CDP advertisements, sweeps subnets for devices, scans ports, and gives you SSH, SFTP, serial console and RDP access — plus temporary TFTP and DHCP servers for staging hardware. Fourteen tools in one installer.
- Who is it for?
- People who go to the equipment: network engineers, field-service technicians, infrastructure administrators, IT support teams, managed service providers and data-centre technicians. If your work involves standing next to a rack, or talking someone else through one, it was built around that.
- Is it free?
- Yes. There is no paid tier, no trial period, no account and no licence key. Download it and use it.
- Why would I use this instead of the tools I already have?
- For any single job, you probably would not — PuTTY, Wireshark and Nmap are each better at their own speciality. The argument is that a call-out needs six of these tools and switching between six applications on a laptop screen is where the time goes. A host you find in the scanner opens straight into SSH; the switch port and the terminal are the same window.
Installing and running it
- Which versions of Windows does it run on?
- Windows 10 and Windows 11, 64-bit. There is no 32-bit build, and no macOS or Linux version.
- Why does Windows warn me when I run the installer?
- Because the installer is not code-signed, and SmartScreen correctly reports that nobody has vouched for the file. It is not a false positive. Compare the SHA-256 of your download with the value published on the download page before you run it. A match confirms the file is identical to the one published here — not who published it, which is what a signature would add.
- When will it be signed?
- There is no date to give. A signing certificate requires a verified organisation or a validated individual identity; the usual cloud route, Microsoft's signing service, is not open to publishers in Jordan or Saudi Arabia, and no alternative has been settled. Until that changes, the installer is unsigned and the hash check is what you have.
- Do I need administrator rights?
- Not to install it — it installs per-user — and not for normal use. Packet Capture and Port Finder may need the app run as administrator, depending on how Npcap was installed: Npcap's installer can restrict the driver to administrators, and if every adapter refuses to open, that is why. Releasing or renewing a DHCP lease and flushing DNS from the Diagnose page always need it, because Windows only lets an elevated process do those.
- What is Npcap and do I have to install it?
- Npcap is a packet-capture driver from the Nmap project. Two features need it: Port Finder, because LLDP and CDP frames are invisible to an ordinary socket, and Packet Capture. Everything else works without it. If you already have Wireshark installed, you already have Npcap.
- Can I deploy it across a fleet?
- There is an MSI for Intune and Group Policy. Be aware that it is unsigned, which most deployment tooling will flag and some will refuse outright — worth establishing before you plan a rollout.
Security and privacy
- Where are my saved passwords stored?
- Encrypted with ChaCha20-Poly1305, under a key derived from your app password with Argon2id, in the application's own store. The app password itself is never written to disk, so a credential file copied off your machine is useless without it.
- What happens if I forget the app password?
- The saved credentials are permanently unreadable. Not by us, not by anyone — that is what 'the password is never stored' means. You can set a new password and carry on; the connection entries survive, but the stored passwords do not. Put the password in a password manager before you set it.
- Does it send any data anywhere?
- There is no telemetry, no analytics and no account. The application reaches out in three situations: on launch, the Overview screen asks api.ipify.org for your public address and pings 1.1.1.1; when you press Check for updates, it fetches the release manifest from cysectek.com; and when you run Diagnose, Speed Test or a site survey, it resolves a few well-known names, requests Google's and Microsoft's connectivity endpoints and runs the speed test against speed.cloudflare.com. Nothing about you or your usage is sent. Scan results, credentials, reports and transcripts stay on your machine.
- Has it been security audited?
- No. There has been no third-party audit and no penetration test, and the security page says so plainly rather than implying otherwise.
- How do I report a security issue?
- Email info@cysectek.com with what you found, how to reproduce it and the impact you think it has. Please allow a reasonable window to fix it before publishing. There is no bug bounty — this is one person's project.
What it does and does not do
- Does it support SSH keys?
- Yes. OpenSSH format keys — Ed25519, RSA and ECDSA — including encrypted ones, plus legacy PEM RSA. Keys already in ~/.ssh are offered on the connection form. PuTTY's .ppk is not read directly; the app tells you how to convert it in PuTTYgen.
- Does it support SSH agents, jump hosts or tunnelling?
- Agents and jump hosts, yes. The Windows OpenSSH agent — the one ssh-add puts keys into — can hold the key, so it never has to be a file the app reads, and hardware-backed keys work through it. A saved connection can be reached through another saved connection as a jump host: one hop, which is what a bastion needs. There is still no general port forwarding or tunnelling, and Pageant's own protocol is not spoken. If you forward ports through a bastion, keep the tool that does that.
- Can it run an iperf3 test?
- Yes, both ways. Throughput is an iperf3-compatible client and server: test against any iperf3 -s, or start the server and let any iperf3 -c test against this machine. TCP or UDP, upload, download or both at once, parallel streams, and iperf3's username-and-key authentication. It is verified against a stock iperf3 3.21, and the command line it shows runs unchanged anywhere iperf3 is installed.
- Can it give the customer a report?
- Yes. Site Report is a page of its own: tick the sections you want, press Run survey, and the app runs the tools behind them in order while the hand-over document fills in — devices grouped by role, subnets, services, wireless, connectivity tests, throughput runs, and recommendations with the evidence for each, opening with how it was measured. Every report is kept in the app under the customer's name and can be reopened, exported as one self-contained HTML file styled for print, or printed to PDF. Sections without data are left out.
- Does it replace Wireshark?
- No. Capture here is a visibility check — one line per packet, no detail tree, no follow-stream, no pcap files. For actual trace analysis, use Wireshark. It is free and it is better at this.
- Does it replace Nmap?
- No. The scanner is a native TCP and UDP sweep answering 'is this port open on this host'. There is no OS fingerprinting, no service-version detection and no scripting engine. For security assessment work, Nmap remains the right tool.
- Why does Port Finder show nothing?
- Most often you have not waited long enough — switches advertise on their own timer, typically every 30 to 60 seconds. After that, check Npcap is installed, and check what is between you and the switch: a dock, desk hub or unmanaged switch may not forward the frames. If all that is right, the switch has LLDP and CDP disabled and the information simply is not on the wire.
- Why do I need Location Services on for Wi-Fi scanning?
- Windows will not return wireless scan results to any application unless Location Services is enabled. It is a platform rule that applies to every wireless tool on Windows, not a decision this app makes.
Support and licensing
- Is there a Linux or macOS version?
- Not today. A Linux port was started and is currently on hold. There is no macOS build and none planned.
- How do I get support?
- Email info@cysectek.com. Include the version from the About screen, what you were doing and the exact message you saw. Reproducible bugs get fixed.
- Can I use it commercially?
- Yes. There is no restriction on commercial use and no per-seat licence.
Still unanswered?
The documentation goes further, and anything it does not cover is worth an email.