[REVS] Hacking with the Google Search Engine

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Hacking with the Google Search Engine
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SUMMARY

Hackers and security experts use various custom and open source tools to
complete their tasks. In fact, one of the tools they use you probably use
every time you browse the web, the Google Search Engine.

Paul remembers the first time he used the Google Search Engine years ago.
Paul was amazed at how quickly it fulfilled my search request. Google's
huge index of systems / information and it's ability to perform complex
searches have evolved over the years. When we performed security
assessments and penetration test, we regularly use Google to locate
information that organizations typically want to keep private and
confidential.

DETAILS

The reason for me writing this article is to give you several examples of
basic and complex Google search terms and queries. As a disclaimer, it is
not my intention that you use this information to invade the privacy of
someone else or access data and files on systems that do not belong to
you. It is strictly educational information and a way to make people more
aware of what kind of information they may be exposing to the rest of the
world.

Using Google To Locate Password Files:
One of the most common remote web authoring tools is Microsoft's Front
Page. Front page extensions and WebDav, the services on the web server
that allow you to remotely connect and author web pages, can be configured
with a certain degree of security. However, in certain configurations, the
userID and password are stored in local files on the server. Using a
Google query, you can easily locate thousands of these files and dump the
contents.

The query form is quite simple: "inurl:(filename).pwd", where (filename)
is the name of the .pwd file. This query can be expanded to be very
specific and target a specific site by using a command to search for a
specific site or domain. The results of a specific search like this would
list hundreds if not thousands of these files that would contain something
like "# -FrontPage- dmiller:I1KEaH1TZqxEw". Basically dumping the userID
and password.

This type of basic query can be used to find all kinds of interesting
information such as using the "intitle:"index of" (name of directory you
want to locate)" which not only reveals many web directory structures of
"index of/", it also reveals how many web servers on the Internet do not
have even the most basic forms of permissions and directory security. You
will find that once you access a particular directory, that you can then
move up the directory tree and you never know what you may find.

The rest of the article can be found at:
<http://castlecops.com/article-6466-nested-0-0.html>
http://castlecops.com/article-6466-nested-0-0.html


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

The information has been provided by <mailto:zx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Paul
Laudanski.
The original article can be found at:
<http://castlecops.com/article-6466-nested-0-0.html>
http://castlecops.com/article-6466-nested-0-0.html



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