Google Hacking

This is an introduction to the use of the Google search tools for obtaining information about organizations, servers, vulnerabilities, usernames, encrypted and clear text passwords, etc. There are books (1,2) published on this topic, therefore this is only a brief overview of these tools and techniques.


  1. Google basic search techniques

    The main on-line references are The Google Hacker's Guide (pages 1-13) by Johnny Long. and, of course, Google basic and operators.

  2. Google hacking techniques

  3. The main on-line reference continues to be The Google Hacker's Guide (pages 14-26) by Johnny Long. Johnny also maintains the Google Hacking Database (GHDB) with known uses of Google search for hacking. Note: the examples selected below follow the textbook for easy reference by the students.

    The above examples only touch a small number of the cases collected by Johnny Long in the Google Hacking Database (GHDB). There are 1387 entries in the database organized in 14 categories.

This tutorial also does not cover automated tools for Google hacking although they exist for Windows and Linux/UNIX. You should note that Google requires prior authorization for you to use any automated tool with this purpose.


This page is maintained by Al Bento who can be reached at abento@ubalt.edu. This page was last updated on January 30, 2012. Although we will attempt to keep this information accurate, we can not guarantee the accuracy of the information provided.