This ComputerWorld Blog post by Martin McKeay shows how powerful the Google search engine really is, when hackers use it to detect and attack vulnerable databases.

ComputerWorld’s Blog post is reprinted below –

The concept isn’t new: use Google and the other search engines to find vulnerable systems and attack them. What seems to be new is the sheer volume of attacks currently being performed , up by a factor of forty or more in the last couple months alone. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

The search engines are doing their job; they’re indexing every site exposed to the Internet. They reveal the good as well as the bad about these sites and report it without any filtering. All we have to do is type in the right query string and we get the information we want. The crackers are just taking the right search queries, plugging them into bots or other programs and letting them run over night. Next morning they have a nice listing of vulnerable targets just waiting to be attacked.

So what can we do about this? Some people want to make the search engines stop indexing sites with known vulnerabilities. The information is already out there and any filtering by the search engines is going to make their results suspect for all queries. Besides which, the bad guys would simply create their own web crawlers and no one else would have access to the information. Another suggestion is to remove the information of how to create these search queries from the Internet, but the information is already out there and the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. The real answer is much harder than either of those; systems administrators need to pay more attention to how they’re securing their databases. Once again, there is no easy answer to the problem with security.

Pandia Search Engine News has published an excellent article on using Google Alerts to gather competitive intelligence on other businesses as well as monitor the buzz about your own business or industry.

From the article –

One of the oft overlooked hidden gems in Google’s enormous offering is Google Alerts. Within minutes, one can be signed up for email alerts that can give them and their business a leg up on the competition.

Alerts can be used to spy on competitors, keep track of what people are saying about your business, or follow an important news story.

Some reasons listed in the article of using Google Alerts for intelligence gathering include:

1. Spy on Your Competitors

2. Keep Up To Date on Your Industry

3. Track Yourself and Your Business

4. Get News Stories for Your Site or Blog

You can read the entire article and sign up for Google Alerts @ Using Google Alerts for Intelligence Gathering.

A sign of our modern Google times - a liberal Democrat writer gets ‘googled’ by her conservative Republican parents, only to have one of her old news articles come back to haunt her and ignite a family feud. When the writer mocked her Republican parents in an old news column, she never dreamed her mother would find out. Watch what you do, Google is watching you.

From the article –

JUST IN TIME for “google” to become an official verb, my mother learned how to google. About a week ago. She figured it out herself even though, less than a year ago, she thought high-speed Internet access was strictly for impatient people, namely her adult children. When she finally agreed to give up dial-up, it opened up a whole new world: googling.

And so last week, my mother decided to google, and for fun, she googled me. Then she clicked on an essay I’d written called “9 Tips for Surviving the Holidays at Your Republican Parents’ Home.” It was published in the LA Weekly in 2004.

The only newspapers to grace my parents’ door are the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Catholic Digest and maybe, in a pinch, USA Today. My father, a former football coach, used to hate the New York Times because it had no self-respecting sports page. Now he just hates it for the liberal rag that it is, and he feels the same way about the Los Angeles Times.

So I figured I was safe writing a little 900-word satire for the LA Weekly. I mean, who of my parents’ generation and political bent reads the Weekly? The bulk of my mother’s e-mails are forwards on moms or kids or dogs or jokes or Erma Bombeck’s purple hat musings. I never dreamed she would venture to Google and happen upon the piece in which I liberally trash Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, box wine and the holidays. Now my mother is no longer speaking to me.

My last e-mail from her was something like this: “I googled you and found ‘How to Survive the Holidays With Your Republican Parents.’ Why didn’t you share that one?” Why indeed?

In my guilt, I’ve sent them summer reading and care packages. But they are silent. They are hurt. They go out of their way to make Christmas special with feasts, presents, highballs — and their ungrateful daughter mocks their politics and religion. So I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t speak to me either.

You can read the entire article @ Oops, Mom Googled Me.

A recent article by Robert Paul Reyes from Men’s News Daily warns about the potential for employers and recruiters to Google you, as well as check your online profiles and blogs on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.

From the article –

It’s not just busybodies who are “researching” people using the Internet, recruiters and headhunters are also “Googling” their candidates. They peruse popular online gathering places like MySpace.com and Facebook.com to glean information about prospective employees.

If you are looking for a new job, maybe you should update your MySpace profile and remove any references to drugs and promiscuous sex.

You can have the most professional resume in the world, but if your MySpace profile states that your hobbies are streaking, smoking weed, cheating on your taxes and picking up hoochies, you can forget about landing a decent job.

Many people maintain blogs on the Net, where they publish controversial and even incendiary views. We enjoy freedom of speech, but remember that your political thoughts may be read by the person who will interview you for that fantastic job you’ve been hoping to get.

We need to keep it mind that our profiles in popular Web portals like MySpace are not private journals, they are posted in public venues visited by millions of people. Just imagine that your priest or your boss is looking over your shoulder the next time you make an entry in your MySpace Web page.

If you’ve been angling for a cool new job, just remember: Your credit history and police record will be checked AND you will be Googled!

According to an Associated Press article, search engine giant Google has launched a search engine that acts as a one stop search for all US Government sites. The site will probably rival or even beat the US Government’s own search engine FirstGov.

From the article –

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Internet search engine Google wants to be a top source of information from the federal government.

The company plans to announce a new product today that aims to be a one-stop site for searching the Web sites of government agencies.

It’s called Google U.S. Government Search, and it targets federal employees who are heavy users of government Web sites.

It’s on the Web at usgov.google.com.

The site could go up against the government-sponsored site Firstgov.gov, which targets the same audience and is powered by Microsoft’s MSN system. But Google officials say the new search engine should complement Firstgov without directly competing.

It is also designed to help citizens navigate the Web to get the government information they need with customized pages.

The search engine will also deliver information from commercial sources such as The Washington Post and CNN.

Scott Granneman at SecurityFocus.com discusses some advanced Google search features that may allow hackers and other malicious web users to find sensitive web site and intranet weaknesses and access user logon id’s and passwords.

Some of the advanced Google search features discussed in the article can also make the average user better at using the Google search engine for legitimate purposes.

You can read the article @ Googling Up Passwords.

AP reporter Chelsea J. Carter discusses how Google and Googling are making things difficult for her in the dating scene.

From the article –

It starts in a bar: Meet a guy, have a drink, exchange names and later phone numbers.

That meeting is followed by a call a couple of days later. It’s going swimmingly well, you think. Then he says, perhaps innocently, “So I Googled you …”

And there it is. The latest hurdle in my dating life – overcoming Google.

With a click of a mouse, he had found out about my job, my education and a few other things that I didn’t even know were out there. (Read: Internet postings from over the years about everything from my supposed pea-sized brain to my weight – from a few people who, shall we say, aren’t the biggest fans of my stories.)

You can read the entire article @ Googling love interest opens a Pandora’s box.

Google has teamed up with Motorola to offer web search on Motorola’s internet-enabled wireless mobile devices. The joint venture will allow users to search the web from almost anywhere at anytime.

You can read more about the Google venture with Motorola @ Googling on the go.

We all know Google is a great people search; business search and other background and investigative search engine, but the real power in using Google is with all of the tricks that you can use to really zero in on what you are looking for online.

Google Power by Chris Sherman is one of the best, if not the best, non-technical and no-nonsense Google search tip books for skip tracers, private investigators and online researchers on the market. The book has over 400 pages of Google news, tips and tricks for becoming a Google Power User.

Some Google topics covered in the book that are of particular interest to skip tracers and private investigators include entire chapters on the best ways to use Google to find people; searching Google News; conduct business background and corporate records searches; customizing Google to get the most out of your searches and much more.

You can read more about Google Power by Chris Sherman, including customer reviews on Amazon at Google Power on Amazon. You can even buy a cheap used copy of the book for around $10.00 on the Amazon site.

Once again, good luck with all of your web search and people search efforts.

Google has released the beta version of their new blog search engine.  Now you can search the information-packed blogosphere, with its constantly updated news and blogs.  You may even be able to track down some people and  phone numbers that get posted to these sites.  You can access the blog search at Google Blog Search and a list of frequently asked questions and how-to tips for the blog search is available at About Google Blog Search .

Good luck with your searches!