Fergie's Tech Blog

Is Google Exposing You to Hack Attacks?

A PCWorld.com article by Robert McMillan, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

Somewhere out on the Internet, an Electric Bong may be in danger. The threat: a well-crafted Google query that could allow a hacker to use Google's massive database as a resource for intrusion.

"Electric Bong" was one of a number of household devices that security researcher Johnny Long came across when he found an unprotected Web interface to someone's household electrical network. To the right of each item were two control buttons, one labelled "on," the other, "off."

Long, a researcher with Computer Sciences Corporation and author of the book Google Hacking for Penetration Testers, was able to find the Electric Bong simply because Google contains a lot of information that wasn't intended to lie unexposed on the Web. The problem, he said at the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas last week, lies not with Google itself but with the fact that users often do not realize what Google's powerful search engine has been able to dig up.

In addition to power systems, Long and other researchers were able to find unsecured Web interfaces that gave them control over a wide variety of devices, including printer networks, PBX (private branch exchange) enterprise phone systems, routers, Web cameras, and of course, Web sites themselves. All can be uncovered using Google, Long said.

But the effectiveness of Google as a hacking tool does not end there. It can also be used as a kind of proxy service for hackers, Long said.

posted by Fergie @ 8/02/2005 08:37:00 AM