THREAT MONITOR
Protect your business from a Google hack
Mike Mimoso
03.01.2006
Rating: -4.39- (out of 5)
Google hacking is the practice of using specially crafted search engine queries to cull information about a target. It should be part of every pen-tester's repertoire. The idea is to turn Google's extensive search powers after an enterprise's vulnerable servers and files, password logs, open directories, Web-based device-management panels, remote desktop protocol clients or administration interfaces for routers and switches. You want to discover the sensitive security information that's exposed on the Internet before a black hat does. The trick is to use advanced operators, special searching techniques offered by Google that enable advanced queries. Here is a sampling of advanced operators that you can combine with a search term against your company's domain:
intitle, allintitle -- searches for terms in Web page or Google group title
inurl, allinurl -- searches for terms in URLs
filetype -- searches URLs that end in a particular file extension
allintext -- searches for a string within text of a page
site -- searches only for pages hosted on a specific server or domain
link -- searches for pages that link to other pages
inanchor -- searches text representation of a link in an HTML anchor
daterange -- searches for pages indexed by Google within certain date ranges
cache -- searches for cached versions of pages
info -- searches summary information of a site
related -- displays sites related to a site
phonebook -- searches for business or residential phone listings
rphonebook -- searches for residential phone listings only
bphonebook -- searches for business phone listings only
author -- searches for authors of newsgroup posts
group -- searches title of Google Groups posts for search terms
msgid -- searches for Google Groups message identifiers, strings that identify newsgroup posts
insubject -- searches Google Groups for subject lines
stocks -- searches for stock market information about a company
define -- returns definitions for a search term
Source: "Google Hacking for Penetration Testers" by Johnny Long
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Also, several tools run automatic Google scans against your company's domain to determine if sensitive information is exposed via a search query. They include:
- SiteDigger -- Automated and Windows-based Uses Google API and requires Google license key. Download at www.foundstone.com/resources/proddesc/sitedigger.htm
- Witko -- Requires Google license key; compatible with Google Hacking Database. Available http://www.sensepost.com/research/wikto/
- Athena -- Windows-based, Performs only one search at a time. Download at http://snakeoillabs.com*
- Gooscan -- Linux-based; does bulk searches. Download at http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/*
*--Denotes product does use the Google API, which is a violation of Google's terms of service. Google has the option of blocking your IP range from using its search engine.
Source: "Google Hacking for Penetration Testers" by Johnny Long.
About the author
Michael S. Mimoso is Senior Editor of Information Security magazine.
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