Google Hacking Mini-Guide

Using search engines such as Google, "search engine hackers" can easily find exploitable targets and sensitive data. This article outlines some of the techniques used by hackers and discusses how to prevent your site from becoming a victim of this form of information leakage.

The Google search engine found at http://www.google.com offers many features, including language and document translation; web, image,newsgroups, catalog, and news searches; and more. These features offer obviousbenefits to even the most uninitiated web surfer, but these same features offer
far more nefarious possibilities to the most malicious Internet users, including
hackers, computer criminals, identity thieves, and even terrorists. This article
outlines the more harmful applications of the Google search engine, techniques
that have collectively been termed "Google hacking." The intent of
this article is to educate web administrators and the security community in the
hopes of eventually stopping this form of information leakage. This document is
an excerpt of the full Google Hacker's Guide published by Johnny
Long, and located at
http://johnny.ihackstuff.com.

Basic Search Techniques

Since the Google web interface is so easy to use, I won't describe the
basic functionality of the
http://www.google.com web page.
Instead, I'll focus on the various operators available:

• Use the plus sign (+) to force a search for an overly common
  word. Use the minus sign (-) to exclude a term from a search. No space
  follows these signs.
• To search for a phrase, supply the phrase surrounded by double quotes
  (" ").
• A period (.) serves as a single-character wildcard.
• An asterisk (*) represents any word—not the completion of a
  word, as is traditionally used.

Google advanced operators help refine searches. Advanced operators use a
syntax such as the following:

operator:search_term

Notice that there's no space between the operator, the colon, and the
search term.

• The site: operator instructs Google to restrict a search
  to a specific web site or domain. The web site to search must be supplied after
  the colon.
• The filetype: operator instructs Google to search only
  within the text of a particular type of file. The file type to search must be
  supplied after the colon. Don't include a period before the file
  extension.
• The link: operator instructs Google to search within
  hyperlinks for a search term.
• The cache: operator displays the version of a web page as
  it appeared when Google crawled the site. The URL of the site must be supplied
  after the colon.
• The intitle: operator instructs Google to search for a term
  within the title of a document.
• The inurl: operator instructs Google to search only
  within the URL (web address) of a document. The search term must follow the
  colon.

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