Google Hacking for Penetration Testers

Corey Nachreiner writes "Until recently, I considered myself a Google power-user; so much so that I often call Google my "second brain." Whenever I stumble upon a computing dilemma I can't solve, I submit an advanced query to my second brain, Google, and let it supply the answers. That's why I was So There when Johnny Long released his recent book, Google Hacking for Penetration Testers . I heard Johnny's lively, light-hearted presentation to a packed house at the BlackHat Briefings last summer in Las Vegas. It was the hit of the show, but in one hour he could only present a few of his startling findings about Google hacking. After reading Johnny's book, I've learned a ton more and realized I wasn't quite as Google-savvy as I thought. As with my real brain, I've only been using about ten percent of my Google-brain's capacity." Read on for the rest of Nachreiner's review.

Google Hacking for Penetration Testers
author	Johnny Long
pages	448
publisher	Syngress
rating	8
reviewer	Corey Nachreiner
ISBN	1931836361
summary	Google's dark and dork sides exposed; despite the title, useful for everyone who'd like to get the most out of google.

According to its cover, Johnny Long's book focuses primarily on revealing the "Dark Side" of Google -- a promise it delivers in spades. But I can also heartily recommend Google Hacking to newbies who simply want to learn how to harness Google's full potential.

The first few chapters of the book walk you through Google's interfaces and features, then introduce you to Google's advanced operators and techniques you can use to refine your Google searches. Instead of submitting basic searches that leave you arduously parsing hundreds of results for your desired answer, you quickly learn to submit powerful queries that almost instantly yield the results you intend. Even as an experienced Google user, I learned a lot from Google Hacking's early chapters. For Google neophytes, this alone makes the book worth its price.

However, we all know Slashdotters really want this book in order to learn how hackers misuse Google. Well, you won't be disappointed. As soon as Long has taught you to submit advanced queries, he wastes no time in showing you the techniques l33t Google hax0rs use to exploit the search engine's power. For example, did you know you can use Google as a free proxy server? By submitting a specially-crafted, English-to-English translation query, you can capitalize on Google's translation service to anonymously submit all your Web requests. This simple hack just scratches the surface of Google's malicious potential.

Most Web surfers don't realize the sheer amount of extremely sensitive information available for the harvesting on the Internet. In that sense, Google Hacking is eye-popping. Do you want to find misconfigured Web servers that publicly list their directory contents? A quick Google search does the trick. Or, suppose you found some new exploit code that only works against a particular version of IIS 5.0. Submit a quick Google query for a helpful list of possible targets. Do you want to harvest user logins, passwords (for example, mySQL passwords in a connect.inc file), credit card numbers, social security numbers or any other potentially damaging tidbit that Web users and administrators accidentally leak onto the Internet? Google Hacking shows you how, with highly refined searches gleaned from the community contributing to the Google Hacking database (GHDB) found on Long's Web site.

While Long's book discloses these and many other potentially malicious Google searching techniques, it does so responsibly, with the goal of prevention in mind. Only the less damaging search strings are fully revealed. Long saves the juicier (read: more dangerous) hacks for your own discovery. Long even obfuscates the sensitive results of the more damaging search strings in order to protect the innocent incompetents he refers to as "googledorks." After showing you how hackers subvert Google to their malicious intent, Long dedicates a chapter to how Web administrators can configure their Web servers securely in order to prevent sensitive data from making it into a Google Hacker's clutches.

Though I've gushed about the book so far, I will quibble with its inconsistent tone. Some of its chapters target readers having different levels of technical understanding. While the book starts out in a voice easy enough for even the most novice user to understand, some of the later chapters, on topics such as document grinding, database digging, and query automation, jump drastically and use language and techniques that only programmers or Unix power-users would understand. In addition, the humor that made Johnny's live presentation so memorable shows up in his book, but in scant supply; frankly, more jokes would be welcome.

But these negatives are mere nits. Whether you're a penetration tester wanting to exploit Google, a Web administrator wanting to protect yourself from information leaks, or even a newbie wanting to harness Google's full potential, Google Hacking for Penetration Testers makes an excellent resource. If you, too, use Google as a second brain, pick up Johnny Long's book and learn how to exploit this powerful search engine to its full capacity.

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Corey Nachreiner, Network Security Analyst for WatchGuard's LiveSecurity Service, writes about network security on the free RSS news feed, WatchGuard Wire (browsable version, RSS feed.) You can purchase Google Hacking for Penetration Testers from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Nice website

Personally I've been using his site [ihackstuff.com] for a while now. It is great site with user submitted hacks and a community review. It really is amazing what is on Google and knew a book was coming to exploit it.
Besides being able to find sensitive files, [google.com] hidden portals, [google.com] and vulnerable servers, [google.com] it is also a good way to get free porn. [google.com]

The exploits are just really advanced searches like the one below.

"http://*:*@www"bangbus

Re:Nice website

Wow. I hope you know you just FUBAR'd someones webserver. awesome.

If you say so. The Samba server exploit only returns one result (which is at members.lycos mind you), the hidden portals are in public domain, and as for the sensitive files bit: it's out there on the Internet anyway (as in public information). It is one thing to hand over the keys to a server (exploit research required), it's another to hand out public information.

Johnny Long? Porn Star?

With a name like that, he should be!

Heh

Penetration testing?

In that sense, Google Hacking is eye-popping

That's what she said!

</rimshot>

You're not alone!!!

Yes, you are not alone. Many, amd more especially here at slashdot think [and believe] they know more than they actually do!

Re:You're not alone!!!

Yes, you are not alone. Many, amd more especially here at slashdot think [and believe] they know more than they actually do!

I know I do.

Stop using porn keywords.

Instead of submitting basic searches that leave you arduously parsing hundreds of results for your desired answer

Dude, stop searching for porn. I usually feel really lucky if my search produces more than a single page of results.

apache.leakage.org on the list

I see that apache.leakage.org is on the list of misconfigured servers.

I didn't think that was possible;)

Re:apache.leakage.org on the list

It would be surprising if leakage.apache.org were on the list. But leakage.org is just a random site in Malaysia.

This is ironic

One of the first links I checked out from the google results he lists is apparantly some ddos [dc.spec.pl] perpetrator's weapons list page.

Go Figure.

GeoCamming

Here [hackaday.com] is a cool article on Hackaday that describes GeoCamming, another Google exploit.
I like to find interesting cameras and then use NeoTrace [neotrace.com] to trace the addresses to find out exactly where the camera is. It's quite fun.

amazon link

Amazon link to the book since the site's slashdotted [amazon.com]

Penetration testing

My roommate is dating a penetration tester from my work. You should have seen the look on her face when he told her what he does for a living.

How did someone come up with this name for a profession anyways?

I also found this interesting ...

Seems like Google itself isn't immune to hacking [gregduffy.com] either ...

Google Proxy server

For example, did you know you can use Google as a free proxy server? By submitting a specially-crafted, English-to-English translation query, you can capitalize on Google's translation service to anonymously submit all your Web requests.

Too bad Google doesn't translate graphics, which some web pages are full of.

We all know`

We all know that a male geek's second brain most certainly isn't Google (unless that is a clever nick name he bestowed upon it). I can just imagine wil wheaton shuddering at being linked to this thought as well as all the spam geared towards "natural google enhancement".

obvious

Right now the server [ihackstuff.com] is undergoing some severe penetration testing, and from the looks of it, not doing too well...

Interesting, but...

What I really want to see abused is AskJeeves. That smarmy little morpion really bugs me for some reason.

Penetration Tester

My new dream job!

Penetration Tester

Sounds more like a cheesy pickup line to me: "Excuse me Miss, I'm Mr. Jones with the Office of Penetration Testing. You've been scheduled for a security checkup."

Yes, but...

... does Google have Double penetration ! In vogue [spamusement.com]

Johnny is a great presenter

I've been fortunate to live and work in the same area as Johnny Long, and have heard him locally a couple of times. The most memorable was when he was a guest speaker at a security class while I was working on my masters degree. His demo on pen testing was great. If you ever get the chance, listen to him speak.

I'd imagine his book is just as lively, informative, and insightful. I'm buying to when I get home. I've had it in my saved list for a while now.

apache.leakage.org

An Apache mirror running Microsoft-IIS/6.0.

*boogle*

Google as a proxy...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Google doesn't do anything to the image references -- so that if you want to anonymously browse a website through Google, wouldn't you also have to turn image loading off on your browser? I mean, sure it'll work for text, but I didn't think this was exactly uncommon knowledge?

Also, I don't think Google translates the hyperlinks to work within the translation-page does it? So you would have to copy out any URL's that you wanted to go to and re-enter them into your translation query.

Can someone please tell me what's so special about this l33t "specially formed English-to-English translation" method? I mean, how much better can it be than just typing in the URL you want and choosing "Korean to English" in the drop-down?

Original Book Title

'How to be malicious with search engines'. BTW this is nothing new. Google '1997 Simple Nomad hack faq' which explains using search engines (at the time altavista) to do exactly what this 'groundbreaking book' says!

google proxy

*** WARNING ***
When doing a google translation proxy, remember two things:
1) The images that you load from the target page do *not* use the proxy. So if they want to track you down, all they have to do is look for the next few image loads following the google load for the main page.
2) en|en translations stand out in the logs, since it's not a normal translation option. You should use (for example) de|en. It'll fail on every german word and show the original word, which is english.

another article

The register had a mirrored [theregister.co.uk] article from security focus. It walks you through the basic idea behind the book.

Legal Liabilities...

I wonder what the legal ramifications are if someone uses google to break into a website? Or is google has a cache of a website that does not want a cache to exist?? For example, google has since done away with it, but when news.google went public, you could get a cache to any newspaper you wanted, even if the newspaper required a subscription. I wonder what would happen if google stuck to their guns, said we are keeping all content cached, and the newspapers sued. Who would win?

Since there is so much potential for abuse, I wonder if soon government will "wiretap" google, waiting for certain kinds of searches and then zeroing in the person who did the search. For example, what if some teen in highschool did a search for "anarchist cookbook". Would that be enough to have the police go talk with him, or watch him, or get a search warrent? What if they then find gasoline, and *gasp* styrofome cups in his garadge?? Can they charge him with conspiracy to make napalm? Or worse, what if I want a chem lab in my basement, do I have a right to it, to conduct my own research?

It would be like what the city of chicago is going. First they banned all guns in the city. Then they sued the gun manufacturers whenever a gun was used for a crime in their city limits. The City of Chicago argues "hey, we banned it, and you keep selling it to people who do illegal things in chicago, you have no safegaurds".

I wonder if there is a search engine out there that is opt-in only, does not link to spam or places that don't sell stuff but only link to places that sell (deceptivly I might add too). Maybe some search engine where users can moderate returns, like we do at slashdot. When you search for "baseball", with each hit you get to moderate how good of a search return it is. I have alot of ideas. Maybe I should not post them here, maybe I should talk to a patent lawyer first.

wiretap google?

I wonder if soon government will "wiretap" google

What makes you think they haven't already?

Free porn???

You need to use "Google hacking" to find free porn? I know a lot of hacking techniques for all kinds of things, but I can't remember the last time I had to use any of them to find more free porn than I can possibly look at in a hundred lifetimes.

crazy!

These hacks are just the beginning and i can't wait to see how far Google will allow such queries to go on. I probably think that Google will limit special or *hacking technique queries search anytime soon, if not expect big brother or corporate giants to interfere with search engines and take actions against these small but powerful methods of hacking thru 'search engines'.

Which is why author linked to Snopes...

Which is why author linked to Snopes...

Re:10 percent Google yes, your brain, no.

yes, but you apparently only use 10% of your brain. you failed to notice the submitter linked to the snopes article in his write-up.

Re:Of course you may use only 10% of your brain

I use 90% of my brain to look for aliens [berkeley.edu].

Re:Of course you may use only 10% of your brain

Um, did you click on that link??? It was a link to a urban myth site that debunked the 10% rumor. I guess you use less of your brain than you advertised.

Re:Of course you may use only 10% of your brain

Apparently you need to allocate more of your brain capacity to grammar.

Re:I wanna be a tester

Considering how male dominated the computer field is, I'd say they'd be mostly dudes. I'll take a pass on this job.

Re:It's not fair

'decent pron'?

Isn't that an oxymoron? ;)

Re:Sounds fun.

Yeah, and then after they told us that we passed our penetration test with flying colors, they told us not to enter our bank's web site on other web sites. They wanted to keep under the radar and not become a target for black hat attacks (they used the term hacker). It makes me think maybe the penetration test didn't go so swell. I don't work there anymore so here is the site: http://www.farmerstatebank.com