Details on Internet-wide Scans from SBA
To clarify what we are scanning on the Internet, here are some details on the project and which tools we use. Most importantly: if you want your IP to be excluded from future scans, please send an email to abuse@sba-research.org.
For quite some time now we scan Internet-wide for well-known ports that use TLS, most notably HTTPS and XMPP-related ports as well as all email protocols that support TLS or STARTTLS. For that we use sslyze and masscan or zmap for discovery, tools that can scan the entire IPv4 range within minutes (given a fast enough Internet connection).
You can find a project description of TLSiP here (unfortunately german-only). Please contact Martin Mulazzani if you have any questions.