A Google Search Tip

I’m currently reading “Google Hacking for Penetration Testers”, by Johnny Long of ihackstuff.com. It’s a fascinating read. The plot is all about these evil “black hat” hackers maliciously intent on hacking into servers and accessing sensitive data using… Google, of all things!

So far, the plot is thickening, and the valiant “white hat” hackers are coming to the rescue with code and security measures of their own, combating the evil “black hat” hackers and thus saving the world from virtual EVIL. It’s a fascinating read, really… and I highly recommend it.

For example: wanna find some interesting “stuff” on various Apache servers? such as hidden files and directories? Just type in the following in the Google search field… [ a similar search string was shared on the RBJ forums]

intitle:index.of ws_ftp.log

Just substitute “ws_ftp.log” with “.mp3″ and you can find hidden MP3 files!

Well, this is why it’s always important to have a default “index.html” file to hide any files you don’t want the public to see that might be lurking about in your directories…