Google Dorking

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What Does Google Dorking Mean?

Google dorking is a hacking technique that makes use of Google’s advanced search services to locate valuable data or hard-to-find content.

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Google dorking is also known as "Google hacking."

Techopedia Explains Google Dorking

At the surface level, Google dorking involves using specific modifiers to search data. For example, instead of searching the entire Web, users can click on tags like "image" or "site" to collect images or find information about a specific site. Users can utilize other commands like "filetype" and "datarange" to get other specific search results.

Although benign types of Google dorking simply use the resources that are available from Google, some forms of it are concerning to regulators and security specialists because they could indicate hacking or cyberattack reconnaissance. Hackers and other cyber-criminals can use these types of Google dorking to obtain unauthorized data or to exploit security vulnerabilities in websites, which is why this term is gaining a negative connotation from the security community.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.