Google Official Hacking Database Closes

[Tami]

Google Official Hacking Database Closes

By Dan Morrill

Over a month ago, Johnny I hack stuff, the Google hacking database was reported to be shut down, and today all that is left is a video of Christmas in Kenya.

The loss of the official Google Hacking Database is going to be tough for security engineers, as the information is still out there in the underground channels, and is often one of the first things that a hacker will try against your systems. If it is in Google, then odds are highly likely that there are going to be other security issues with a company.

Google hacking is like scanning a company without having to worry about being caught or showing up on any network intrusion detection systems. This is still a viable way of working out the process of security scanning a company but using Google. Unfortunately, this is also, where many script kiddies ended up looking for the same security flaws that companies could be looking for. Many of the Google hacks were still viable and important for people to know about. With the loss of the Google Hacking Database, right now, many people will be less prepared to deal with what is in Google, and more likely to not know how to do this against their own company.

Google hacking might look like a script kiddy skill, but is important for security engineers to know about in their toolbox. Even thought the official Google Hacking database is gone, the information is still out there, and script kiddies are still going to have access to the knowledge and information. It might be worthwhile to see if it would be possible to reconstitute the entire database on some other system, as it is one of the more important things to know about your systems, and how the world sees them.
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About the Author: [/b]
Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management. Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through his blog, [url=\"http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/security/dmorrill\"]Managing Intellectual Property & IT Security[/url], and is an active participant in the [url=\"http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/\"]ITtoolbox blogging community[/url].