Gather Information using Advanced Google Hacking Techniques
Advanced Google hacking refers to the art of creating complex search engine queries by employing advanced Google operators to extract sensitive or hidden information about a target company from the Google search results. This can provide information about websites that are vulnerable to exploitation.
Launch any web browser, and go to https://www.google.com
In the search bar search for intitle:login site:eccouncil.org. This search command uses intitle and site Google advanced operators, which restrict results to pages on the eccouncil.org website that contain the login pages. An example is shown in the screenshot below.
Similarly, type the command EC-Council filetype:pdf ceh in the search bar to search your results based on the file extension and the keyword (here, ceh). Click on any link from the results (here, CEH-brochure.pdf) to view the pdf file.
Apart from the aforementioned advanced Google operators, you can also use the following to perform an advanced search to gather more information about the target organization from publicly available sources.
- cache: This operator allows you to view cached version of the web page. [cache:www.eccouncil.org]- Query returns the cached version of the website www.eccouncil.org
- allinurl: This operator restricts results to pages containing all the query terms specified in the URL. [allinurl: EC-Council career]-Query returns only pages containing the words “EC-Council” and “career” in the URL
- inurl: This operator restricts the results to pages containing the word specified in the URL [inurl: copy site:www.eccouncil.org]-Query returns only pages in EC-Council site in which the URL has the word “copy”
- allintitle: This operator restricts results to pages containing all the query terms specified in the title. [allintitle: detect malware]-Query returns only pages containing the words “detect” and “malware” in the title
- inanchor: This operator restricts results to pages containing the query terms specified in the anchor text on links to the page. [Anti-virus inanchor:Norton]-Query returns only pages with anchor text on links to the pages containing the word “Norton” and the page containing the word “Anti-virus”
- allinanchor: This operator restricts results to pages containing all query terms specified in the anchor text on links to the page. [allinanchor: best cloud service provider]-Query returns only pages in which the anchor text on links to the pages contain the words “best,” “cloud,” “service,” and “provider”
- link: This operator searches websites or pages that contain links to the specified website or page. [link:www.eccouncil.org]-Finds pages that point to EC-Council’s home page
- related: This operator displays websites that are similar or related to the URL specified. [related:www.eccouncil.org]-Query provides the Google search engine results page with websites similar to eccouncil.org
- info: This operator finds information for the specified web page. [info:eccouncil.org]-Query provides information about the www.eccouncil.org home page
- location: This operator finds information for a specific location. [location: EC-Council]-Query give you results based around the term EC-Council
This concludes the demonstration of gathering information using advanced Google hacking techniques. You can conduct a series of queries on your own by using these advanced Google operators and gather the relevant information about the target organization.