Google Dorking is a technique that hackers use to find information that may have been accidentally exposed to the internet.
Advanced use of Google Search Operator is called Google Dorking. In simple terms, it is using Google to run targeted search queries using specific keywords or commands. Basically narrowing down the search to find what we are looking for.
Google Dorking uses some of google’s inherent abilities to find things on the internet that we can find via specific search strings. These can be log files, error files, webcams opened to the internet, and even internal pages or admin that allow us to get into a device. In some cases, you can also find passwords in error logs. Sometimes even the administration config files are exposed to the internet due to the server being incorrectly set up.
Google Dorking is done by Google Search Operators. A few of them are :
hacking site:gourav-dhar.com
hacking site:gourav-dhar.com inurl:ethical
You will get the following result :
intext:< keyword > - This filter will check for the parameters being present in the meta-information of the website(i.e. the information you see on the title and description of a google search).
intitle:< keyword > - Result will return only those pages having the keyword in their HTML title
allintitle :< keyword >- searches for all the specified terms in the title.
allinurl :< keyword > - searches for all terms in the url.
filetype:< keyword > - Looks for explicit document types. filetype:pdf will searches for pdf files in sites
ext:< keyword > - Like filetype. ext:pdf finds pdf extension.
cache :< keyword > - Used to see Google’s cached version of a site
And there are a few other Search Operators as well which can be found via Google Search. Let me show you some of the cool stuff you can do with it. Let’s look at some of the cool things we can do with it.
allintext:username filetype:log
We will get a list of log files that contain the text “username”. This can be useful (for hackers) if the log by mistake contains the user credentials. If you explore the results a little bit and apply filters, you will be able to find usernames or passwords for further exploitation.
Google - intitle:"webcamxp 5" and you will find a list of webcams you can dive right into.
Look at this, live preview of some random lab it seems. Does anyone happen to know which place this is 😆
A good point to start is the Google Hacking Database. https://www.exploit-db.com/google-hacking-database. If you are not sure about the query strings and how to frame them. Go to this site and search for it. Several people have done it before so you can use their search queries. The Google Hacking Database or the Exploit Database looks like this and you can enter your queries on the top right.
Doing whatever I did above is not illegal. We are fetching information that has been made public. Hackers make use of google dorks to find information that might have accidentally been made public. However, using the information that has been presented to do something which can be troublesome for someone is crossing the line.
To know more about the ways of Information Gathering for Ethical Hacking you can go through my blog on “Information Gathering”
And that’s a wrap! Hi, I am Gourav Dhar, a software developer and I also write blogs on Backend Development and System Design. Subscribe to my Newsletter “The Geeky Minds” and learn something new every week - https://thegeekyminds.com/subscribe
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I am Gourav Dhar, a 2019 graduate from IIT Roorkee where I pursued my bachelors in Electronics and Communication Engineering.
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