By Johnny Long, Foreword by Ed Skoudis
HIGHLIGHT
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. |
You Got THAT With Google?
Date: Dec 2004
Pages: 448 (est.)
User level: All
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DESCRIPTION
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.
KEY
SELLING POINTS
- 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.
MARKET
INFORMATION
Google.com domain continues to distance itself from the competition and has reached an all-time high in U.S. search referral market share. As of March 23, 2004, Google.com posted a U.S. search referral percentage of nearly 41 percent, up from 35.99 percent on the same day last year, based on data from WebSideStory’s StatMarket, a leading source of data on Internet user trends. Second place competitor and former leading search referral domain, Yahoo.com, posted a referral percentage of 27.40 percent, down from 30.95 percent on the same day last year. MSN.com placed third at 19.57 percent. Google's market dominance is due in large part to the detail, sophistication, and accuracy of the results it provides. These same factors that make Google so useful to the everyday Web surfer are the same ones that make it so dangerous in the hands of a malicious hacker.
The sophistication and functionality of Google searches has resulted in several publications boasting Google’s superiority to other search engines, providing tips, tricks and even hacks for novice, intermediate, and advanced Internet users. However few of these publications even mention security, and none are written with the IT professional’s security tasks in mind. This book not only explores the more obscure and compound features of Google, but it educates the reader how to protect himself against the hacking muscle that this supreme search engine has become
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Johnny Long has presented at SANS and other computer security conferences nationwide, including the Black Hat Briefings. In addition, he has presented before several government entities During his career as an attack and penetration specialist, he performed active network and physical security assessments (one in the cube is worth twenty on the net) for hundreds of government and commercial clients. He is a Black Hat featured speaker, and his website can be found at http://johnny.ihackstuff.com
Ed Skoudis is a security consultant with International Network Services (INS). He has performed numerous security assessments, designed secure network architectures, and responded to computer attacks for clients in financial, high technology, healthcare, and other industries. Ed conducted a demonstration of hacker techniques against financial institutions for the United States Senate and is a frequent speaker on issues associated with hacker tools and defenses. He has published several articles on these topics, as well as the Prentice Hall best seller, Counter Hack: A Step-by-Step Guide to Computer Attacks and Effective Defenses. His latest book is titled Malware: Fighting Malicious Code.
TECHNOLOGY
BACKGROUND
The Google search engine found at www.google.com offers many different 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 allow for far more nefarious possibilities to the most malicious Internet users including hackers, computer criminals, identity thieves and even terrorists. This book outlines the more nefarious applications of the Google search engine, techniques that have collectively been termed “Google hacking.” The intent of this book is to educate web administrators and the security community in the hopes of eventually securing this form of information leakage. |
