2007-07-30

Leveraging google to find new content

OK! Back online with a new dedicated system! Todays topic:

I LOVE google hacking.

Google hacking is the art of using google to turn up information that you really should not be able to access in a normal environment.

here is a great example of how to use google to search for peoples database dumps. This is a great way for you to source content for your website. Or if you like things a bit more black, a great way to find email address, passwords, usernames, and tons of other VERY personal information.

Check this out

Now try modifying the search query to search for `users table or `contacts`  table.

Cool eh? Get digging! And if you find anything really cool, feel free to post a link to it in the comments.

-Rob

2007-08-14

Presenting: Another Google Hack!

Are you all getting tired of posts about Google Hacking yet?

Didn't think so.

I just wanted to make a quick post today to share this tip with you all on how to find some decent proxy lists. 

This query will return a huge amount of proxy lists. You'll want to either write your own shell script to filter out the dead ones, or plug them into your program of choice.

2007-08-01

Further liberation of information

Following in the footsteps of yesterday's post on Google Hacking many people have come forward to share their finds. Some of the data that people have found is truly amazing....for instance, we have discovered an INCREDIBLE amount of vbulletin databases, complete with user names and emails to boot!

To find vbulletin databases, the modification to the google query is quite simple:Try this

I myself wasted almost an entire evening sifting through data to bring you guys a couple really GREAT finds.

Some of this data will make its way into the free section of the website for posterity (it is just TOO good to pass up!), but in the meantime, you are welcome to peruse the links below and grab whatever tickles your fancy:

Info for some kind of Chat-Bot plus a bunch of Vbulletin data:

http://eroticasp.com/gg.sql

More Vbulletin databases (amazing, eh?)

http://www.nsmarabia.com/vbb.sql
http://forumsokak.net/dump/vbulletin.sql
http://www.alskor.com/forumbackup-05-Mar-2007-8aded.sql
http://www.thehulkster.org/goldint_rth2.sql
http://www.hgvpdl.com/vb2.sql
http://stardvb.com/tester/forumbacku...2006-850e0.sql

258 megabytes of articles
http://www.centralwebtesting.com/sg/articles.sql

Here are some more interesting ways to modify this google hack:

"phpMyAdmin" "running on" inurl:"main.php"

"# INSERT INTO"  filetype:sql phpbb2

"# INSERT INTO"  filetype:sql  inurl:private

"# INSERT INTO" emails filetype:sql

"#mysql dump" filetype:sql 21232f297a57a5a743894a0e4a801fc3
(md5 for ADMIN)

"vbulletin" filetype:sql seo
(This one was particularly juicy)

"# Dumping data for table " -site:mysql.com -cvs

UPDATE (Oct 17,2007): Since this post came out, many MANY people started downloading alot of the databases that were discovered via the above search queries. As a result, quite a few of them are no longer online...I suppose their respective owners noticed when their bandwidth ballooned by several gigs. ANyways, some of the above google queries may no longer be super productive, but there are HUNDREDS of other google queries you can use to turn up more great stuff. Put your thinking caps on! 

2007-09-12

Oh god I can't believe Im linking to Matt Cutts

I never thought it would happen....but Im about to link out to Matt Cutts blog....the very thought is giving me indigestion.

*burp* 

There, I did it.  I can't believe I just did that....At least I've got a good reason for it:

Cutts just wrote about a very useful Google search feature that lets you return results for a given term sorted by recency. I won't go into it too much because I'm in the middle of a hundred other things, but click the link to Matt's blog to read more about it.

Here is an example that returns results for Seocracy added to Google's index within the last 24 hour: Last 24 hours of Seocracy

Why is this so useful? Well it gives me a much easier way to chart the success of my link building and indexing strategies. I can now tell exactly when the links are coming in and sort them by the date they were added to the index.....

'nuf said. 

2007-10-01

Ask yourself this before you invest in dedicated proxies

I'm sure you can all relate to this sentiment:
Proxies are a pain in the ass.

Am I right?
If any of you are anything like me, you've spent wasted a bunch of time trying to find free proxy alternatives. You might use Tor or a CGI/PHP Proxy for web browsing. You probably scour the internet for public proxy lists and then scour the net again to find programs to test those proxies for connectivity and anonymity....

I've spent so much time and energy on finding free proxy alternatives that I figured I might as well list a few here for you all to benefit from. My hope is that I can at least save you all a little time and money. Here goes:

Palary:
When doing referrer spamming, you dont have to use much bandwidth or make multiple requests for each target. All you really need to do for each target is make one call through a proxy using a fake referrer.

For referrer spamming, TOR will suffice. Its free and stable and anonymous, but not super fast. It can be a bit tricky for newbies to figure out how to install TOR, and many of you might not have dedicated or VPS hosting on which to use TOR.

So if TOR isn't an option for you, I suggest you try this:

https://palary.com/main/load_page?sfrurl=http://www.targetsite.com&sfrReferer=http://www.fakereferer.com

Using the palary browser, you can send a fake referer request! Can you believe it? This works just as well as using TOR or any other proxy and it doesnt require any setup, installation or any of your server resources!  

Beyond using it for referrer spamming, Palary is a fairly good all-round solution for anonymous browsing, so check it out.

Translation:

This one is pretty obvious. Online website translation tools make for pretty decent proxies. I wouldnt depend on them for high-anonymity, but they can do the trick for quick and dirty tasks. Here are some examples:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=ko_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.TARGETWEBSITE.com 

Also, check out these website translators:

http://www.worldlingo.com/
http://www.transparent.com/
http://www.tranexp.com/
And of course, Google.

Externals:

By externals, I am referring to websites that allow you to open up external websites from the current sites. They aren't at all a sure thing, so be sure to test them first by going to whatsmyip or some other IP checker website. Here's an example:

http://www.netvibes.com/proxy/xmlProxy.php?url=www.TARGETWEBSITE.com

So there you have it. Those are just a few examples of the kind of things you can look into before you decide to go spend a bunch of money on proxies.

To tell the truth, you really cant beat having your own dedicated & private IP based proxies, but until you can justify spending some money on them, make sure you look at all the free alternatives available to you. 

UPDATE: I removed a bunch of exmaples that didn't work properly. This is what happens when you write posts without paying proper attention. 

2007-10-03

More crazy Google Hacking!

In a rather bizarre twist of events, Google is hosting a tool created for "Hacking Google"

This weird little application, hosted on code.google.com is described as the following:

Google Hacks is a compilation of carefully crafted Google searches that expose novel functionality from Google's search and map services. For example, you can use it to view a timeline of your search results, view a map, search for music, search for books, and perform many other specific kinds of searches. You can also use this program to use google as a proxy.

It's a neat (if somewhat halfbaked) little tool that lets you try out a bunch of the more popular google hacks out there. The proxy option doesn't work at all....trust me. But otherwise, it's worth a spin!

Check it out:

http://code.google.com/p/googlehacks/ 

2007-10-31

Check this out

I came across this query today that ostensibly returns database usernames and passwords. Check it out

Notice how every single entry says "...Password Obscured..."

Interesting eh? Google has finally caught onto the fact that people have been leveraging their index to find exploitable systems.

As most of you know, the practice of using Google to find exploitable systems has been going on for a long long LONG time, but this is the first time I have seen Google react to the problem.

I wonder, does this means we are soon going to see google restricting certain wildcard searches? I can't imagine they'd be foolish enough to restrict/disallow certain queries, as Im sure the fallout from angry bloggers and searchers would be something to reckon with. You know what it would be like: Freedom of information, slipperly slope, etc etc

However, I like the steps they have taken in the above example by simply "obscuring" sensitive information like a password; this might be a viable solution for Google to combat the ever-increasing amounts of server pwnage that they seem to be facilitating.

2008-02-15

I've been remiss in updating my blog

OK, sorry things have been so dead around here lately.

Don't blame me! Blame Twitter!!!! I seem to do so much more talking on Twitter about things I'd normally write on this blog.  It's shameful I know.

Let's recap some stuff that's been going on recently.

- I found a pretty awesome collection of downloadable dictionary databases, which is exactly the kind of thing that I get excited about. It's like finding buried treasure. We all know about Word Net, but there are some other really great pieces of data in there as well. 

- Esrun outed a trick I told him about a while back.

Never mind the fact that I asked him not to talk about it...who cares....Esrun is practically a fucking saint for giving you all his little Gmail Account Creator script.  So he can say whatever he wants. 

Basically, when you are mass creating google accounts, after a few accounts are created, google will start serving you" sorry" messages instead of a captcha. The trick to get around this is to request the google captcha from one IP, but submit the form data from a second IP. Google doesn't cross reference the submitting IP with the requesting IP. I think this is somewhat tied into the fact that Google uses the same captcha/account provisioning service for several of its different web properties (Gmail, Blogger, etc).

So basically, all you need to create unlimited Gmail accounts is two IPs because Google isn't cross referencing them.

You know...come to think of it, I am somewhat depressed that Esrun stole my thunder on this one. You filthy sonuvabitch..... :)

Anyways, now Google will most likely patch it up pretty quick, so get on it now my friends!

- Thar be drama a brewin' over at WickedFire, as Jon baits Shoemoney and then receives a C&D, which of course leads to more drama. I have always liked Wicked Fire, but I feel that this is a little bit....much.  Anyways, I posted my thoughts over there so I wont repeat them here. 

And with that, I'm off to enjoy a well deserved weekend.

Play nice kids. 

2008-04-29

A quick Google Dork to return recent lists of proxies in Googles index

I touched on this topic a long time ago with a post called Dude Wheres My Proxy?!?

But I wanted to show you guys another quick google dork to take that search to the next level:

This Google Query will return all proxy lists added to the index in the past month (or past week or whatever you want)

 
This is still not a perfect way to find new proxies to use, since the lists are public they are full of either outdated or dead or already flagged proxies. By using the date modifier in your google search, you can at least try to eliminate as many old outdated proxy lists as possible.

Run these through your proxy checker script and away you go!