Google Hacking?

What? Really!, is it even possible?

Well those were my friend’s statement when I explained this.

While hacking Google isn’t really possible but there are certain tweaks that are possible for us to search better and more deeper than what we regularly do.

Note: Please note that the main purpose of this article is to create awareness, and should be used for educational purpose only.

So what is Google hacking? 

Does it mean defacing the Google webpage?, No it doesn’t. The first step towards hacking is a collective step called “Footprinting” , which basically implies for collecting as much informataion about the victim as possible.

The information can be of a wide spectrum, it does not only imply to the personal information of the victim, it could also be the victim’s environment details, for example a hacker by footprinting learns that for a XYZ victim, a Company name ABC services and maintains the desktops of the victim’s working organization, thus knowing this the hacker can simply make a phone call, and make himself present as the ABC Company’s Administrator & can ask for various passwords, which even the victim presents to the hacker.

All this is only possible if the hacker has a desirable amount of information.

Google hacking is a way to extract information much deeper than normal search operations. Google hacking uses some useful commands to make the most of Google, consider this, you need to specifically search files with PDF format, then using Google hacking its much simpler than searching “XYZ PDF”. Google hacking which is also called Google Dorks has a large number of useful commands, the above search could be done very easily by simply typing “filetype:pdf XYZ” which makes Google search all its links for files with the PDF extension.

The entire set commands is called the Google Hacking Database and is abbrevated as GHDB.

GHDB: https://www.exploit-db.com/google-hacking-database/

So be sure that none of your information is openly available. 😉

Tc and have a cyber safe day!

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