Google Hacking for Penetration Testers, Volume 1 Review

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(More customer reviews)While Google is a researcher's friend, it is a hacker's dream. The subtitle of Google Hacking for Penetration Testers is "Explore the Dark Side of Googling". The dark side of Google is that far too many networks are insecure with inadequate security and enable unauthorized information to leak into Google. This leakage creates the situation where significant amounts of password files, confidential information, and configuration data and much more are easily available.
After reading Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching, the real power and potential danger of Google is easily understood. Author Johnny Long details how penetration testers can harvest information that has been crawled by Google. The need for Google to be an integral part of any penetration test is now easily understood.
In a similar manner, when Dan Farmer wrote SATAN in 1995, it was met with significant consternation in that many felt he was wrong to release such a powerful program into the wild. Silicon Graphics, his employer at the time, considered his conduct unprofessional and summarily fired him. Ironically, in 2005, a security administrator can be fired if they don't run a vulnerability scanner akin to SATAN. Running scanning tools is now part of security due diligence and any administrator not running such a tool is careless.
With that, some may think author Johnny Long gives far too much ammunition to those seeking to peruse corporate data, but those were the same mistaken objections to SATAN. The book is not meant to be a crutch for script kiddies, its aim is rather to show how Google can be used to uncover data that most companies would rather remain secured. It is simply a matter of time until such Google searches will be considered due diligence for any basic security endeavor.
The book's 12 chapters show how one can plunder and pillage corporate data via Google. Chapters 1 and 2 provide a basic introduction to Google searching, including building Google queries, URL and operator syntax, search reduction, and more.
Chapters 3 through 10 detail the internals of Google hacking. The avenues of attack are nearly endless and various methods are detailed from traversal techniques, site crawling, tracking down Web server logins, and much more. With the sheer amount of data produced on corporate Web sites, it is hard not to have information leakage. The problem is that Google is the perfect glue to bond those disparate pieces of data together to form a dangerous set of connected data. Google is now gluing isolated data, which is dangerous data when in the wrong hands.
Chapter 11 details what can be done to protect an organization from Google hackers. While author Johnny Long may be a hacker, he is quite mainstream when he writes that the best hardware and software configuration money can buy can't protect computing resources if an effective security policy is not in place. Long observes that a good security policy, when properly enforced, outlines the assets the organization is trying to protect, how the protection mechanisms are installed, the acceptable level of operational risk, and what do to in the event of a compromise or disaster.
Chapter 11 details the use of the robots.txt file, which can be used to block Web crawlers such as Google. The chapter also recommends the use of various tools to secure an internal Web site. Tools from Foundstone are detailed, in addition to Gooscan, a tool created by Long that enables bulk Google searches to determine how much information has leaked.
A decade ago, Google was the type of powerful search tool that was rumored to be used within the NSA. Today, petabytes of data are only a few clicks away on Google, and with the Google API, all of that information can be seamlessly integrated into a few scripts. The challenge companies face is to take security seriously and stop making it easy for their password files, payroll data, and other confidential information to be entered into Google's server farm.


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Google, the most popular search engine worldwide, provides web surfers with an easy-to-use guide to the Internet, with web and image searches, language translation, and a range of features that make web navigation simple enough for even the novice user. What many users don't realize is that the deceptively simple components that make Google so easy to use are the same features that generously unlock security flaws for the malicious hacker. Vulnerabilities in website security can be discovered through Google hacking, techniques applied to the search engine by computer criminals, identity thieves, and even terrorists to uncover secure information. This book beats Google hackers to the punch, equipping web administrators with penetration testing applications to ensure their site is invulnerable to a hacker's search. Penetration Testing with Google Hacks explores the explosive growth of a technique known as "Google Hacking." When the modern security landscape includes such heady topics as "blind SQL injection" and "integer overflows," it's refreshing to see such a deceptively simple tool bent to achieve such amazing results; this is hacking in the purest sense of the word. Readers will learn how to torque Google to detect SQL injection points and login portals, execute port scans and CGI scans, fingerprint web servers, locate incredible information caches such as firewall and IDS logs, password databases, SQL dumps and much more - all without sending a single packet to the target! Borrowing the techniques pioneered by malicious "Google hackers," this talk aims to show security practitioners how to properly protect clients from this often overlooked and dangerous form of information leakage. *First book about Google targeting IT professionals and security leaks through web browsing. *Author Johnny Long, the authority on Google hacking, will be speaking about "Google Hacking" at the Black Hat 2004 Briefing. His presentation on penetrating security flaws with Google is expected to create a lot of buzz and exposure for the topic. *Johnny Long's Web site hosts the largest repository of Google security exposures and is the most popular destination for security professionals who want to learn about the dark side of Google.

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