Google hacking &optimizing search results

Faris AloulNovember 2011

Contents

What is Google hacking? Basic operators Advanced operators Mixing different operators

What is Google hacking?

It's not hacking into Google servers!

Google hacking is using different Google operators to effectively optimize search results.

It also involves using Google to identify vulnerabilities in websites.

Results are highly customizable.

Basic operators

• For inclusion of something common (+)

Words that are commonly used, like 'the,' 'a,' and 'for,' are usually ignored (these are called stop words).

• Terms you want to exclude (-)

Anti-virus -software

Georgia -america -state

• Search for an exact term (“)

“enter your text here”

Basic operators cont.

• ( * ) any word (wild card)

If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches.

Estonia parliament voted on the * bill

• ( | ) boolean ‘OR’

I'll let you guess this one on your own.

Advanced operators

Advanced operators use a syntax such as the following:

operator:search_term

• There’s no space between the operator, the colon, and the search term!

Advanced operators

Intitle:Google returns results with the word/phrase found within the title

of the page

Intitle:index.of

Inurl:Finds a specific term within the URL

Inurl:view/index.shtml

Advanced operators

Filetype:Searches for a specific filetype

filetype:pdf

filetype:txt

The previous operators are the most commonly used ones.

Mixing operators

Improvise! Inurl:securethiscompany.com intitle:index.of

"mysql dump" Inurl: filetype:sql intext:password

inurl:ftp "password" filetype:xls

intitle:admin intitle:login

Search for phpMyAdmin installations that are configured to run the MySQL database with root privileges:

intitle:phpMyAdmin “Welcome to phpMyAdmin ***” “running on * as root@*”

Johnny I hack stuff

Most of this information was underground until Johnny Long put it into public hands and published the “google hacking database”

Last year he changed his website and started doing charity work.

The old GHDB (last update 2006) http://www.hackersforcharity.org/ghdb/

The new and up-to-date GHDB

http://www.exploit-db.com/google-dorks/

Thank you!