Footprinting Using Search Engines

Search engines can provide a wealth of information about the target organizations. You can simply type the name of the organization in the search field. The search results can provide information, such as:

• The physical location of the organization’s offices
• Contact information
• Email addresses
• Employee names

An attacker can use all this information to initiate an attack. For example, an attacker can initiate a social engineering attack using contact information, telephone, or mobile numbers.

In this exercise, you will use footprint using search engines.

Learning Outcomes

After completing this exercise, you will be able to:

• ?Footprinting Using Google Advanced Search Operators

Your Devices

You will be using the following devices in this lab. Please power these on now.

PLABDC01Domain Controller192.168.0.1/24PLABWIN10Domain MemberWorkstation192.168.0.3/24

• ?PLABDC01

Windows Server 2019 — Domain Server192.168.0.1/24

• ?PLABWIN10

Windows 10 — Workstation192.168.0.3/24

Task 1 — Footprint Using Google Advanced Search Operators

Search engines, such as Google, provide advanced search operators to retrieve information that would have been not easily retrievable from the search engine. With the help of search operators, you can narrow down your search and get the information you need.

With Google specifically, you have several advanced search operators that can locate information. Even though Google provides several keywords, you will use a few key ones in this task.

In this task, you will learn to use some of the key Google Advanced Search Operators.

Step 1

Ensure you have powered on all the devices listed in the introduction and connect to PLABWIN10.

Step 2

From the taskbar, click the Microsoft Edge icon.

Step 3

The Microsoft Edge window opens.

The default homepage, the Practice Labs Intranet, is displayed.

Step 4

In the address bar, navigate to the following URL: https://www.google.com

Press Enter.

The Google website is displayed.

Step 5

In the search text box, type the following:

“google search operators” site:google.com

Press Enter. In this case, you use the site keyword to restrict the search to a specific website. In this case, you are restricting the searched string to google.com.

Step 6

Notice that all the search results are only from google.com.

Step 7

You can also find specific words or a string of words in the URL. You need to use the allinurl keyword to do this, looking for the exact string of text you defined.

Let’s say that you want to search for the “google search operators” string in the URL: allinurl:google search operators

Press Enter.

Step 8

Notice that all the results have the exact text string you searched for.

Step 9

Similar to allinurl, you have another keyword, inurl. Unlike allinurl, it will look for the words somewhere in the URL.

Type the following: inurl:google search operators

Press Enter.

Step 10

The results are returned. However, when you scroll down, there are similar strings like Advanced Google Search Operators that are also located.

Step 11

You can also restrict the search to specific file types. For example, you can search for only PDF files.

Cybersecurity filetype:pdf

Press Enter.

Step 12

The search results display PDF files with the Cybersecurity word in their title.

Note: You may have to scroll past Google ads that appear at the top of the search.

Step 13

You can also look for definitions using the define keyword. To do this, type the following command: define:cybersecurity

Press Enter.

Step 14

The output displays the definition of Cybersecurity.