When a bank robber is getting ready to rob a bank, you can bet the successful ones case out the bank beforehand and try to learn every possible thing they can about the bank’s strengths and weaknesses. Well, when a cybercriminal is zeroing in on a company to attack on the internet, there are three main Google searches they use to do just about the same thing.

The following three searches should give you a good hacker’s eye-view of your company's web presence and exactly where the most obvious weaknesses lie.

The three searches, taken from IT World, are (note that the xxx.com should be replaced with your URL):

Site:xxx.com – This displays the systems under that domain name known to Google and is used by attackers to quickly identify potential targets on the internet. This also shows pages that exist under that domain, the structures and technologies (HTML, Notes, ASP, PHP, etc) in use and helps the attacker focus their attack.

Filetype:yyy site:xxx.com – This quick search allows hackers to uncover possible confidential data accessible on your site. The yyy should be replaced with common file names like doc, xls, txt, rtf, ppt, and the search commonly reveals data that can range from customer lists to marketing lists to phone books to email addresses and more.

Link:xxx.com – This reveals sites that link to your site and can help attackers discover business partners and others who might have special access through partner networks, firewall rules, VPNs, etc. This is also a good search to possibly reveal phishing and scam sites that may be linked to you in order to steal content and graphics.

While these three searches barely just scratch the surface of the ever-morphing world of Google hacks, these should quickly reveal the most obvious, and easily correctable, problems with your company’s internet presence.

Tags: Google Hacks

Posted by pschooff in Better Protection • Google • Hackers | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While Gmail’s popularity may be positively viral, the email software remains emphatically antivirus. But Microsoft’s new Windows Live OneCare recently started incorrectly flagging Gmail as a threat.

According to an article at ZDNet, when OneCare users tried to access their Gmail accounts last week, a warning popped up telling them that their systems were infected with a virus called "BAT/BWG.A".

Obviously this was a clear case of, and clear example of, a false positive. While this one was fairly harmless, as once Microsoft was informed of the problem, they released a new antivirus signature that quickly resolved the issue, false positives have been known to cause much more havoc.

In terms of my own experience with false positives, a certain V.I.P. email incorrectly identified as spam once nearly cost me a job. You can bet I checked my junk mail folders much more judiciously after that.

Apparently, Microsoft’s OneCare problem with Google began when Google made some changes to its Gmail website. Google is currently reviewing its processes and procedures to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

And I guess in terms of Microsoft versus Google, if you can’t beat ‘em, flag ‘em.

Tags: Google, Microsoft, False Positive,

Posted by pschooff in Google • Spam | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An article from CSOonline reports that Google's new source-code search engine will make it easier for hackers to search out software bugs, password information, and even proprietary code. Google's source-code search engine is different from their standard web search engine in that it directly accesses source-code files posted on the internet.

Mike Armstrong, vice president of products for Fortify Software, said, "You could also use that kind of search to look for things that are vulnerable and then guess who might have used that code snippet and then just fire away at it.”

Hackers will also be able to search for code vulnerabilities in password mechanisms as well as search for proprietary phrases within software, potentially uncovering source code that simply does not belong on the internet.

Security experts say that while the implications are noteworthy, they are not earth-shattering. Most skilled hackers were already able to do this, and this just makes it easier. For its part, Google recommends developers use generally accepted good coding practices including understanding the implications of the code they implement and testing it appropriately.

Tags:Google,Fortify Software, CSOonline

Posted by pschooff in Google • Small Medium Enterprise | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)