Footprinting Through Search Engines

 

    Attacks use search engines to extract information about a target such as login pages, employee details, technology platforms, etc. This information helps the attacker to perform social engineering and other types of advanced system attacks.

    Famous search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo are had Advance Search options. By using that attacker finds, filter, and sort specific information regarding the target. Search engines are also used to find all other sources of publically available information. You can find major job portals that provide critical information about the organization.

Advance Google Hacking Techniques

    Extract Sensitive or hidden information google hacking database plays a major role. Complex search queries that help to extract confidential or sensitive information for example,

[cache:]     Displays the web pages stored in the google cache

[link:]      Lists web pages that have links to the specified web page

[related:]     Lists web pages that are similar to a specified web pages

[info:]     Presents some information that Google has about a                            particular web page.

[site:]    Restricts the results to those websites in the given domain.

[allintitle:]    Restricts the results to those websites with all of the search keywords in the title.

[intitle:]     Restricts the results to documents containing the search keyword in the title.

[allinurl:]    Restricts the results to those with all of the search keywords in the URL.

[inurl:]    Restricts the results to documents containing the search keyword in the URL.

[location:]    Finds information for a specific location.

People Search on Social Networking Sites

    Social networking sites are simply called social media. It provides useful information about the individual that helps the attacker in performing social engineering. 

    The People search provides critical information about a person or organization including location, emails, websites, contacts, important dates, etc. Information about an individual can be found on various social networking sites Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, YouTube, etc.