Google Hacking for Penetration Testers

by Johnny Long and Ed Skoudis

Book Overview

Google, the most popular search engine worldwide, provides web surfers with an easy-to-use guide to the Internet, with web and image searches, language translation, and a range of features that make... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931836361
• ISBN13: 9781931836364
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Syngress Publishing
• Length: 502 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 7.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

The reference to the good, bad and ugly of Googling

An excellent book dedicated to a seemingly narrow topic. Googling is mainstream, I can't think of one person that has traveled the internet that hasn't stopped by Google.com at least once in their surfing career. Unfortunately, there are hackers that spend a lot of time on Google! If you are responsible for securing your employer's network you can not be without this indispensable reference. For less than $50 you could save your company from exposing information that can be readily used by hackers to obtain your most prized data. Chapters 1-2 provide you with the basics of Googling. There isn't much more information than you can get from Google's website, but Johnny does a great job of explaining the basics of Google. Chapters 3-10 are the meat of the book. While I've used Google extensively in performing penetration tests before reading this book I've learned many new techniques to dig deeper in less amount of time. Chapter 11 explains how you can secure your systems from hackers using Google to gather information about your company. The chapter also introduces tools such as Gooscan. It also details methods Google has in place to remove information you'd rather not have the public see. Chapter 12 discusses automating your Google searches with the Google API. A basic understanding of computer programming is required. The book concludes with two appendices which will help you in developing a good strategy for security testing and securing your website. The author's writing style is straightforward and easy to read. Reading and absorbing this book is like taking a master's level course in the art of information enumeration. Highly recommended for anyone administering networks connected to the Internet.

Great for stimulating ideas .........

I am involved in penetration testing on an occasional basis (my principal role is audit management, my principal interest is systems auditing), per other reviews this is an excellent resource for anyone planning or executing tests. I have used google with simplistic searches and obtained good results (e.g. pictures of site being tested, too much detail in job postings ...). This book is an excelent source of ideas and techniques, for both social engineering, and more technical tests. It has also made me consider what the google desktop search tool could be used for, when run on key servers in internal nets. Authors writing style is very easy to read yet packed with valuable information. This book is likely to be of significant value to forensic investigators and for those with an interest in competitive intelligence.

Indispensable reference for the dark side of Google searches

While Google is a researcher's friend, it is a hacker's dream. The subtitle of Google Hacking for Penetration Testers is "Explore the Dark Side of Googling". The dark side of Google is that far too many networks are insecure with inadequate security and enable unauthorized information to leak into Google. This leakage creates the situation where significant amounts of password files, confidential information, and configuration data and much more are easily available. After reading Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching, the real power and potential danger of Google is easily understood. Author Johnny Long details how penetration testers can harvest information that has been crawled by Google. The need for Google to be an integral part of any penetration test is now easily understood. In a similar manner, when Dan Farmer wrote SATAN in 1995, it was met with significant consternation in that many felt he was wrong to release such a powerful program into the wild. Silicon Graphics, his employer at the time, considered his conduct unprofessional and summarily fired him. Ironically, in 2005, a security administrator can be fired if they don't run a vulnerability scanner akin to SATAN. Running scanning tools is now part of security due diligence and any administrator not running such a tool is careless. With that, some may think author Johnny Long gives far too much ammunition to those seeking to peruse corporate data, but those were the same mistaken objections to SATAN. The book is not meant to be a crutch for script kiddies, its aim is rather to show how Google can be used to uncover data that most companies would rather remain secured. It is simply a matter of time until such Google searches will be considered due diligence for any basic security endeavor. The book's 12 chapters show how one can plunder and pillage corporate data via Google. Chapters 1 and 2 provide a basic introduction to Google searching, including building Google queries, URL and operator syntax, search reduction, and more. Chapters 3 through 10 detail the internals of Google hacking. The avenues of attack are nearly endless and various methods are detailed from traversal techniques, site crawling, tracking down Web server logins, and much more. With the sheer amount of data produced on corporate Web sites, it is hard not to have information leakage. The problem is that Google is the perfect glue to bond those disparate pieces of data together to form a dangerous set of connected data. Google is now gluing isolated data, which is dangerous data when in the wrong hands. Chapter 11 details what can be done to protect an organization from Google hackers. While author Johnny Long may be a hacker, he is quite mainstream when he writes that the best hardware and software configuration money can buy can't protect computing resources if an effective security policy is not in place. Long observes that a good security policy, when properly enforced, outlines the asset

A True Eye Opener

I have been using this book for three weeks. Every time Google Hacking gets further than three feet from my keyboard, I get up, find it, put it back by my side. I first used the "recipies" in the book to locate intellectual property violations of SANS material. Next, I went on a digital painting campaign and created over 150 images and used the book to help me find the raw source material. Most recently, I have used the optimized searches the book shows one how to do to help with a research project. Buy the book, try the searches, learn what is possible. It wouldn't hurt to use the book for its intended purpose as well, to see what information about you, about your organization is exposed on the Internet.