Passive optical probing, utilizing the natural light emissions from a switching field effect transistor (FET), can be used to provide significant information about CMOS operation. In a normally operating circuit, the emission is synchronous with the switching events. Thus the light emission carries timing information from the circuit that can be extracted only using the time-correlated single-photon detector. The radiation is primarily in the near infrared band (1.0 – 1.5mm) and its observation through the chip substrate is desired, that limits the operation band by silicon transparency window above 1.1 mm. The currently available single photon detectors such as APDs and photomultiplier tubes suffers from a sharp decrease of sensitivity above 1 mm and their utilization makes impossible the diagnostic of the chip in a real manufacturing cycle.We present a new superconductive technology providing us with a simple to manufacture, single-photon detector and counter (SPD), which can work from ultraviolet to near-infrared bands. The tested SPD’s were fabricated from superconducting NbN 3.5 and 10-nm-thick films. The devices were patterned into narrow (200-nm-wide) meander-type structures, covering 10x10 mm2 area, and is proved to operate in the single-photon mode in 0.4–3.0 µm band. The photo response signal magnitude did not depend on the photon energy and is determined by the value of the bias current. The width of the response pulse was below 100 ps and and jitter is less then 30 ps. The signal-noise ratio was above 30dB with amplifier's noise temperature of 200 K. The value of the device quantum efficiency depends on the light wavelength and varied from to 20% for 850-nm and ~10% for 1550-nm radiation. The experimental value for the detector dark counts was negligibly small. The above parameters clearly demonstrate that superconducting SPD is more sensitive and much faster than any currently existing semiconductor counterparts.