Master at Google Hacking (Dorking) (2024)

Google is one of the most reliable and validated search engine ever in the history of the internet. it is specifically designed to show the result according to our need and even sometimes when we do not know the exact query what to be searched, by entering a few of the words related to the query we get the result.

Google hacking, sometimes, referred to as Google Dorking, is an information-gathering technique used by an attacker leveraging advanced Google searching techniques. Google hacking search queries can be used to identify security vulnerabilities in web applications, gather information for arbitrary or individual targets, discover error messages disclosing sensitive information, discover files containing credentials and other sensitive data.

Here are a few of the tips it will change your Google search experience and you will use Google like a pro.

Google’s search engine has its own built-in query language. The following list of queries can be run to find a list of files, find information about your competition, track people, get information about SEO backlinks, build email lists, and of course, discover web vulnerabilities.

Let’s look at the most popular Google Dorks and what they do.

• cache: this dork will show you the cached version of any website, e.g. cache:securitytrails.com
• allintext: searches for specific text contained on any web page, e.g. allintext: hacking tools
• allintitle: the same as allintext, but will show pages that contain titles with X characters, e.g. allintitle:"Security Companies"
• allinurl: it can be used to fetch results whose URL contains all the specified characters, e.g: allinurl:clientarea
• filetype: used to search for any kind of file extensions, for example, if you want to search for pdf files you can use: email security filetype: pdf
• inurl: this is the same as allinurl, but it is only useful for one single keyword, e.g. inurl:admin
• intitle: used to search for various keywords inside the title, for example, intitle:security tools will search for titles beginning with “security” but “tools” can be somewhere else on the page.
• inanchor: this is useful when you need to search for an exact anchor text used on any links, e.g. inanchor:"cyber security"
• intext: useful to locate pages that contain certain characters or strings inside their text, e.g. intext:"safe internet"
• site: will show you the full list of all indexed URLs for the specified domain and subdomain, e.g. site:securitytrails.com
• *: wildcard used to search pages that contain “anything” before your word, e.g. how to * a website, will return “how to…” design/create/hack, etc… “a website”.
• |: this is a logical operator, e.g. "security" "tips" will show all the sites which contain “security” or “tips,” or both words.
• +: used to concatenate words, useful to detect pages that use more than one specific key, e.g. security + trails
• –: minus operator is used to avoiding showing results that contain certain words, e.g. security -trails will show pages that use “security” in their text, but not those that have the word “trails.”

If you’re looking for the complete set of Google operators, you can follow this SEJ post which covers almost every known dork available today.

Let’s take a look at some practical examples of the best Google hacks. You’ll be surprised how easy is to extract private information from any source just by using Google hacking techniques.

Log files are the perfect example of how sensitive information can be found within any website. Error logs, access logs, and other types of application logs are often discovered inside the public HTTP space of websites. This can help attackers find the PHP version you’re running, as well as the critical system path of your CMS or frameworks.

For this kind of dork we can combine two Google operators, allintext and filetype, for example:

allintext:username filetype:log

This will show a lot of results that include username inside all *.log files.

In the results we discovered one particular website showing an SQL error log from a database server that included critical information:

MyBB SQL Error
SQL Error: 1062 - Duplicate entry 'XXX' for key 'username'
Query:
INSERT
INTO XXX (`username`,`password`,`salt`,`loginkey`,`email`,`postnum`,`avatar`,`avatartype`,`usergroup`,`additionalgroups`,`displaygroup`,`usertitle`,`regdate`,`lastactive`,`lastvisit`,`website`,`icq`,`aim`,`yahoo`,`msn`,`birthday`,`signature`,`allownotices`,`hideemail`,`subscriptionmethod`,`receivepms`,`receivefrombuddy`,`pmnotice`,`pmnotify`,`showsigs`,`showavatars`,`showquickreply`,`showredirect`,`tpp`,`ppp`,`invisible`,`style`,`timezone`,`dstcorrection`,`threadmode`,`daysprune`,`dateformat`,`timeformat`,`regip`,`longregip`,`language`,`showcodebuttons`,`away`,`awaydate`,`returndate`,`awayreason`,`notepad`,`referrer`,`referrals`,`buddylist`,`ignorelist`,`pmfolders`,`warningpoints`,`moderateposts`,`moderationtime`,`suspendposting`,`suspensiontime`,`coppauser`,`classicpostbit`,`usernotes`)
VALUES ('XXX','XXX','XXX','XXX','XXX','0','','','5','','0','','1389074395','1389074395','1389074395','','0','','','','','','1','1','0','1','0','1','1','1','1','1','1','0','0','0','0','5.5','2','linear','0','','','XXX','-655077638','','1','0','0','0','','','0','0','','','','0','0','0','0','0','0','0','')

This Google hack example exposed the current database name, user login, password, and email values to the Internet. We’ve replaced the original values with “XXX”.

The following Google Dork can be used to detect vulnerable or hacked servers that allow appending “/proc/self/CWD/” directly to the URL of your website.

inurl:/proc/self/cwd

As you can see in the following screenshot, vulnerable server results will appear, along with their exposed directories that can be surfed from your own browser.

Google does not only index HTTP-based servers, it also indexes open FTP servers.

With the following dork, you’ll be able to explore public FTP servers, which can often reveal interesting things.

intitle:"index of" inurl:ftp

In this example, we found an important government server with its FTP space open. Chances are that this was on purpose — but it could also be a security issue.

.env files are the ones used by popular web development frameworks to declare general variables and configurations for local and online dev environments.

One of the recommended practices is to move these .env files to somewhere that isn’t publicly accessible. However, as you will see, there are a lot of devs who don’t care about this and insert their .env file in the main public website directory.

As this is a critical dork we will not show you how to do it; instead, we will only show you the critical results:

You’ll notice that unencrypted usernames, passwords, and IPs are directly exposed in the search results. You don’t even need to click the links to get the database login details.

SSH private keys are used to decrypt information that is exchanged in the SSH protocol. As a general security rule, private keys must always remain on the system being used to access the remote SSH server, and shouldn’t be shared with anyone.

With the following dork, you’ll be able to find SSH private keys that were indexed by uncle Google.

intitle:index.of id_rsa -id_rsa.pub

Let’s move on to another interesting SSH Dork.

If this isn’t your lucky day, and you’re using a Windows operating system with PUTTY SSH client, remember that this program always logs the usernames of your SSH connections.

In this case, we can use a simple dork to fetch SSH usernames from PUTTY logs:

filetype:log username putty

Here’s the expected output:

It’s pretty easy to find email lists using Google Dorks. In the following example, we are going to fetch excel files that may contain a lot of email addresses.

filetype:xls inurl:"email.xls"

We filtered to check out only the .edu domain names and found a popular university with around 1800 emails from students and teachers.

site:.edu filetype:xls inurl:"email.xls"

Remember that the real power of Google Dorks comes from the unlimited combinations you can use. Spammers know this trick too and use it daily to build and grow their spamming email lists.

Have you ever wondered if your private live camera could be watched not only by you but also by anyone on the Internet?

The following Google hacking techniques can help you fetch live camera web pages that are not restricted by IP.

Here’s the dork to fetch various IP based cameras:

inurl:top.htm inurl:currenttime

To find WebcamXP-based transmissions:

intitle:"webcamXP 5"

And another one for general live cameras:

inurl:"lvappl.htm"

There are a lot of live camera dorks that can let you watch any part of the world, live. You can find education, government, and even military cameras without IP restrictions.

If you get creative you can even do some white hat penetration testing on these cameras; you’ll be surprised at how you’re able to take control of the full admin panel remotely, and even re-configure the cameras as you like.

Nowadays almost no one downloads music after Spotify and Apple Music appeared on the market. However, if you’re one of those classic individuals who still download legal music, you can use this dork to find mp3 files:

intitle: index of mp3

The same applies to legal free media files or PDF documents you may need:

intitle: index of pdf intext: .mp4

Google hacking techniques can be used to fetch any kind of information, and that includes many different types of electronic devices connected to the Internet.

In this case, we ran a dork that lets you fetch Weather Wing device transmissions. If you’re involved in meteorology stuff or merely curious, check this out:

intitle:"Weather Wing WS-2"

The output will show you several devices connected around the world, which share weather details such as wind direction, temperature, humidity, and more.

“Zoom-bombing” became a popular means of disrupting online meetings in 2020 during the initial lockdown. The company has since placed some restrictions to make it harder to find/disrupt Zoom meetings, but long as a URL is shared, a Zoom meeting can still be found:

inurl:zoom.us/j and intext:scheduled for

The only drawback to this is the speed at which Google indexes a website. By the time a site is indexed, the Zoom meeting might already be over.

Misconfigured databases are one way of finding exposed data. Another way is to look for SQL dumps that are stored on servers and accessible via a domain/IP.

Sometimes, these dumps appear on sites through incorrect backup mechanisms used by site admins who store backups on web servers (assuming that they aren’t indexed by Google). To find a zipped SQL file, we use:

"index of" "database.sql.zip"

We’ve omitted screenshots to avoid exposing any possible data breaches.

The view on whether to obfuscate your WordPress login page has arguments on both sides. Some researchers say it’s unnecessary and using tools like a web application firewall (WAF) can prevent attacks much better than obfuscation would.

Finding WP Admin login pages is not too difficult with a dork:

intitle:"Index of" wp-admin

This can be considered a subset of “vulnerable web servers” mentioned above, but we’re discussing Apache2 specifically because:

• LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) is a popular stack for hosted apps/websites
• These Apache servers could be misconfigured/forgotten or in some stage of being setup, making them great targets for botnets

Find Apache2 web pages with the following dork:

intitle:"Apache2 Ubuntu Default Page: It works"

Another risky yet frequently discovered tool on LAMP servers is phpMyAdmin software. This tool is another method of compromising data, as phpMyAdmin is used for the administration of MySQL over the web. The dork to use is:

"Index of" inurl:phpmyadmin

Google dorks can also be used to find web applications hosting important enterprise data (via JIRA or Kibana).

inurl:Dashboard.jspa intext:"Atlassian Jira Project Management Software"
inurl:app/kibana intext:Loading Kibana

An easier way to find JIRA instances is to use a tool like SurfaceBrowser™, which can identify subdomains as well as the applications on those subdomains (besides JIRA, there are many other applications).

Another dork that can be used as the first step in reconnaissance is to hosted cPanels and then exploit various weaknesses in password resets to take over the cPanel (along with all the websites hosted on it). The dork for this purpose is:

inurl:_cpanel/forgotpwd

Sensitive government documents are the last thing that should be exposed on the internet, but with dorks, they aren’t too hard to find, as shown below:

allintitle: restricted filetype:doc site:gov

There are a lot of ways to avoid falling into the hands of a Google Dork.

These measures are suggested to prevent your sensitive information from being indexed by search engines.

• Protect private areas with user and password authentication and also by using IP-based restrictions.
• Encrypt your sensitive information (user, passwords, credit cards, emails, addresses, IP addresses, phone numbers, etc).
• Run regular vulnerability scans against your site, these usually already use popular Google Dorks queries and can be pretty effective in detecting the most common ones.
• Run regular dork queries against your own website to see if you can find any important information before the bad guys do. You can find a great list of popular dorks at the Exploit DB Dorks database.
• If you find sensitive content exposed, request its removal by using Google Search Console.
• Block sensitive content by using a robots.txt file located in your root-level website directory.

One of the best ways to prevent Google dorks is by using a robots.txt file. Let’s see some practical examples.

The following configuration will deny all crawling from any directory within your website, which is pretty useful for private access websites that don’t rely on publicly indexable Internet content.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

You can also block specific directories to be excepted from web crawling. If you have an /admin area and you need to protect it, just place this code inside:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/

This will also protect all the subdirectories inside.

Restrict access to specific files:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /privatearea/file.htm

Restrict access to dynamic URLs that contain ‘?’ symbol

User-agent: *
Disallow: /*?

To restrict access to specific file extensions you can use:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /*.php$/

In this case, all access to .php files will be denied.

Conclusion

Google Hacking isn’t just a fantastic way to find and view website pages without being presented to the targeted frameworks, but it’s also a legitimate method of revealing data in a typical Information Gathering period of an assault. It is an unquestionable requirement for most Information Security assessments and can yield extraordinary results when executed properly. Many questions are openly partaken in the GHDB for anyone to find and analyze, while explicit, customized tests against destinations can be made using advanced administrators.

Sources:
Master in Googling — How To Become Master In Googling ! (youngisthan.in)
Google Hacking: What is a Google Hack? (acunetix.com)
Google Hacking — Free Google Dorks for Recon | Pentest-Tools.com
What is a Google Hacking❓ — Google Hack (wallarm.com)
Most popular Google Hacking Techniques — Top Google Dorks and Hacks (securitytrails.com)
Google Hacking | Imperva