More Google Hacking: Looking for Hidden Stuff (part 2)

Here’s more Google Hacking. There are actually a lot of keywords and operators you can use to look for files that are supposedly hidden by people on their web servers. Either they’re not smart enough to do the adequate security measures, or their servers are really too weak and unsophisticated to support such security.

More Keywords

Fun with webcams. Most security cameras and webcams are connected to the Internet or Intranet via Local Area Network, and some save files via FTP or broadcast them. These are supposed to be private, but some users forget to set up security.

To see videos from webcams that use the software webcamXP:

“powered by webcamXP” “Pro|Broadcast”

Or you can also use this query, which might refer to several webcams that allow web access to users.

inurl:”ViewerFrame?Mode=”

Do remember that this is best done when connected via broadband, as the camera images refresh often.

Finding chat logs. IRC chats are usually logged using plain text files. Same goes for other IM conversations, such as YM, AOL, Google talk and MSN, if the user chooses to do so. You can search for chats publicly available on the web (meaning they’re not hidden under protected directories) by using the following keywords.

“has quit” “has joined” filetype:txt

This will bring up a results of text files with “has quit” and “has joined” strings in the text, which are usually inserted by the chat software when someone enters or leaves the conference. If you want to search for something more specific, insert your own keyword so that Google will also search for these.

Again, we do not condone prying into the private lives of other people. But if their private lives are clearly broadcast for the world to see, then maybe they meant it that way. And maybe we can even help them by warning them that their stuff is all around the web and can be found using a simple Google search.