As Packet Storm has various site areas, search functionality is tied to each specific section. This design minimizes overhead and optimizes response time.

Four sections are searchable: Files, News, Users, CVE

Valid search terms for Files, News, and Users are limited to the following:

1. Alphanumeric characters
   
2. The numeric identifier of an entry
   
3. Periods, dashes, and underscores
   
4. Spaces, when a query is encapsulated by double quotes
   
5. Data between double quotes are a single search term
   
6. A maximum of five search terms
   
7. At least 4 characters in length and a max of 64 characters
   

Valid searching under CVE is a single CVE value in the format CVE-YYYY-#####

Although initial searches can take a few seconds to load, all searches are cached until a site update occurs or for 24 hours to optimize loads.

Searching via API access will get you the same results as you would normally see from a browser, minus the advertisements. Full data on API usage can be accessed here.