It's one of the simplest hacks we've seen in a long time, and the more elite computer users have known about it for a while, but it's still kinda cool and just a little bit unnerving: A hacker has revealed a way to use Google and other search engines to gain unauthorized access to password-protected content on a dizzying number of websites.While plenty of webmasters require their visitors to register or pay a fee before viewing certain pages, they are typically more than eager for search engine bots to see the content for free. After all, the more search engines that catalog the info, the better the chances of luring new users. But the technique, known as cloaking, has a gaping loophole: if Google and other search engines can see the content without entering a password, so can you.
View: The full story @ The Reg
I use it when a forum replies have been deleted or edited due to bad content - just to see what they _originally_ posted
true, and very useful
you can vciew private information on websites like edu sites a gov sites example:
"top secret" inurl:.gov (you put that in google)
some very potential info *cough* i will say now it would be illegal to read it even thou viewing it in port 80 (view pdfs as html will give you some invisibilty insted of downloading (using port 21) but like i said never read any
Last edited by hackncrap on 23 Aug 2008 - 03:38
Awaits Special Agents knocking at my door.
Surely if they're stupid enough to have it on an OPEN internet then it's their fault if someone reads it??
Last edited by hackncrap on 24 Aug 2008 - 03:05
Reminds me of all the times some doofus has asked about protecting their html or javascript over on Sitepoint. First of all, it has to be displayed or executed by a browser, so it is recoverable. Second, usually people who want to do this are neophytes whose scripting is so pathetically laughable that it would be best hid so that others don't copy their mistakes.
oh noes... l33t !
maybe if you had a look at O'rielly Google Hacks... it will reveal more.
That's one of the main reasons I've changed the name of my admin directory for both my portal and forum and have chosen a strong password, denied anyone else but administrators access to the directory and excluded bots from seeing or accessing those directories with a robots.txt file.
I've been doing this since Firefox 0.8 (or so), but hey, what's old is new again!
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