Using search engines such as Google, "search engine hackers" can easily find exploitable targets and sensitive data. This article outlines some of the techniques used by hackers and discusses how to prevent your site from becoming a victim of this form of information leakage.
The Google search engine found at http://www.google.com/ offers many features, including language and document translation; web, image, newsgroups, catalog, and news searches; and more. These features offer obvious benefits to even the most uninitiated web surfer, but these same features offer far more nefarious possibilities to the most malicious Internet users, including hackers, computer criminals, identity thieves, and even terrorists. This article outlines the more harmful applications of the Google search engine, techniques that have collectively been termed "Google hacking." The intent of this article is to educate web administrators and the security community in the hopes of eventually stopping this form of information leakage. This document is an excerpt of the full Google Hacker's Guide published by Johnny Long, and located at http://johnny.ihackstuff.com/.
Basic Search TechniquesSince the Google web interface is so easy to use, I won't describe the basic functionality of the http://www.google.com/ web page. Instead, I'll focus on the various operators available:
Use the plus sign (+) to force a search for an overly common word. Use the minus sign (-) to exclude a term from a search. No space follows these signs.
To search for a phrase, supply the phrase surrounded by double quotes (" ").
A period (.) serves as a single-character wildcard.
An asterisk (*) represents any wordnot the completion of a word, as is traditionally used.
Google advanced operators help refine searches. Advanced operators use a syntax such as the following:
operator:search_termNotice that there's no space between the operator, the colon, and the search term.
The site: operator instructs Google to restrict a search to a specific web site or domain. The web site to search must be supplied after the colon.
The filetype: operator instructs Google to search only within the text of a particular type of file. The file type to search must be supplied after the colon. Don't include a period before the file extension.
The link: operator instructs Google to search within hyperlinks for a search term.
The cache: operator displays the version of a web page as it appeared when Google crawled the site. The URL of the site must be supplied after the colon.
The intitle: operator instructs Google to search for a term within the title of a document.
A real world example of a conjunction search is trying to find a particular brand and flavor of soup at the grocery store. This is a conjunction search because there are several similarities in what you are looking for and the distractions (in this case other cans of soup that you don’t want) around it. All of the soup cans are relatively similar in size, shape, and color, but there are small differences
?š The writing in Bold refers to the Works Cited page where the info came from
In “Google never forgets: a caution tale,” Max Fawcett (2006) has cautioned readers to be careful of what you publish on the Internet. In the first part of this essay, he mentioned about the internet makes the digital equivalent of a dishonest diary to record your life knowledge, your opinions, and your shameful stories. It is catastrophic when you can not control over the biography’s content. Also, Google can keep everything that you posted many years ago, and they are coming behind of you same as a shadow. In the second part, he tried to explain to us that some of the information in the Internet are fake, unclear and outdated. The author used from Napa Valley as an example that “superior code is also ruthlessly efficient at finding every reference, however obscure, tangential or dated it might be, when an individual’s name is searched.” The author also stated that he made a website in 1998 and after a while and specifically in 2004 he came to search for himself and he discovered that Google still has this information kept in its memory. He also tried to clarify that Google can be a reason for an employee’s termination or job refusing when his/her boss or interviewer search about their background and find some negative feedbacks on their weblog.
Nicholas Carr is an author that focuses on the real word changing. His main focuses are the changes in technology, business and the culture. One of his essay’s, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” focuses on whether or not the Internet is creating problems within today’s society, and with our learning abilities in general. Carr provides detailed examples from Google, research teams and our own history to show the impact it has on today’s life and the minds’ of Internet users.
had ever come across, being "a / a / b / b / c / c / d / d / e / e / f
In this chapter, Lynne Truss talks about the outdated and dreaded punctuation mark, the hyphen. The hyphen has caused controversy over whether or not it shuld be a part of the English Language today. The hyphen was traditionally used to split a word, and to show "that a word is unfinished and continues on the next line" (pg.146). This old style of punctuation is not liked by writers and readers across the board. Truss describes her experience with using hyphens as a disaster. She believed that "hyphen usage is a just bloody mess and is likely to get messier" (pg.149).
The term “Controlled Vocabulary” is not universally understood by all to mean the same thing. So that it can be used freely without misunderstanding, this paper defines the term as a “considered list of values, designed to improve searchability”. A set of “rules of thumb” are provided for use in the determination of whether a given set of values is a Controlled Vocabulary, and guidance is provided on populating one.
Users can be guided through each search method by using the Help option to find resources. Wildcard and Truncate search options are available for convenience if users are unsure of their search terms. However, like most search options the best way for a user to narrow in on a search is to use a Boolean statement. ProQuest offers many other options to help users export and save their searches for future use and for users to be a part of a network linking its users to computer systems
Taking for example a 3 letter word, I have worked out that if we do 3
Cookies are pieces of text stored by the web browser that are sent back and forth every time the user accesses a web page. These can be tracked to follow web surfers’ actions. Cookies are used to store the user’s passwords making your life easier on banking sites and email accounts. Another technique used by popular search engines is to personalize the search results. Search engines such as Google sell the top search results to advertisers and are only paid when the search results are clicked on by users.
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When a user searches for something such as ‘design blogs’ they will then see more adverts design appear. If the user was then to go and search for something such as ‘iPod’ the search engine will remember that they have previously searched for ‘design’ and therefor it might show results that combine ‘design’ and ‘iPods’