Misconfigured machines on the Internet provide information to search engines that can be used to identify them as vulnerable sites. However, most people are unaware that their site is exposed. Using simple queries, a hacker is able to locate vulnerable sites by searching for the "signatures" of typical vulnerabilities. The goal of this project is to evaluate in how far it is possible to gain sensible information about remote sites by only questioning search engines and without ever contacting the site. Afterwards we will develop a strategy that allows to search for vulnerable sites in a systematic and automatic way. As that strategy needs a special tool to contact several search engines at once, we will develop that as well. The tool will be very general and will allow to make efficiently very complex searches about any topic. At the end a series of tests allow us to conclude about the usability of the method.
By: Guy Wald
Published in: RZ3255 in 2000
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