Most of us think of ‘Google’ only as a search engine. You put in a search phrase in the ‘search box’ and it spits out the search results in millions! And there is a competition to be in one of the top search results as well! 🙂 (ok, I am getting a little bit off track here.. :)) But, the essential point is that most of us use ‘Google’ to only perform searches.
So, then what is ‘Google Dorking’?
What if ‘Google’ could be used to do other things as well? Well, this is called as Google Dorking or Google Hacking. It involves using deeper search phrases to extract more data from the Internet. It may sound creepy – but Google Dorking may be used to uncover email addresses, login information, sensitive information, see open CCTV cameras and more! After all, the Internet is an open place for everybody to see, right?
Google dorking is to be used mainly by ‘white hat hackers’ to understand the way hackers work.
But it may used for illegal purposes as well by hackers.
Rather than write about complicated commands that may be used in the wrong way, I will just write about some simple dorks that can return deeper results.
Commands using the Google Dorking;
- intitle:keyword
This helps Google to search for the specific keyword in the HTML title in all the pages of the Internet.
As an example: intitle:facebook will return the following pages:
2. Using the “-site:” operator to return search results without a particular site
As an example:
java -site:oracle.com
will return ‘java’ results without result from oracle.com
3. By the next command, we can combine two operators, to refine the search results even further. As an example:
oracle.com filetype:pdf
will return all ‘pdf’ files in the oracle.com website like this:
Isn’t Google dorking fascinating? 🙂 (but it can be used for malicious purposes too!)
I will try and write more about dorking in a later post too… for now, enjoy the many facets of technology! 🙂
Come back tomorrow as I get back on track with Java… 🙂
References:
- https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/cyber-security-tutorial/google-dorking
- https://www.hackingloops.com/google-dorks/
Frankly, I understood nothing. This is for geniuses, I guess.
🙂 🙂 try it – it is fun though…
oh this is so so cool. Am going to try it!
🙂 🙂 Let me know how it was…
I love the phrase dorking. Just shows it can be used harmlessly but has potential to turn dangerous too. This was a very informative read. Thank you!
Thanks Suchita! 🙂
Google can do all this too!? It’s quite fascinating. I guess one can uncover a lot of things if one knows what and how to look for it.
Yes!