Web searches and Google hacks

The first tools we’re discussing in this chapter are web searches and Google hacks. You might ask why start with searches? Why not go directly to the website and begin there? While it’s tempting to go right where you think the primary information is, this is also one of the first lines of defense for the organization. Because they own the website, they will get information about who is connecting, when they are connecting, what pages they are spending time on, and so on. This information is primarily used by marketing to gather metrics about their brand, focus, and public message. The security teams also use this information to see the same things but from a security perspective. They are interested in what countries requests are coming from, what browsers are being used, and whether there is anything unusual about the requests coming in. We will discuss ways around this later in the chapter.

In the meantime, we are going to focus on the...