RE: Google has a binary Search?

["Hubbard, Dan" <dhubbard () websense com>]

Anyone who wants additional details and code please ping me offline. 

-----Original Message-----
From: funsec-bounces () linuxbox org [mailto:funsec-bounces () linuxbox org]
On Behalf Of Dude VanWinkle
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 1:05 PM
To: FunSec LList
Subject: [funsec] Google has a binary Search?

Hate to forward from another list (got this from ISN), but this is too
nifty not to share with those who dont already know.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&;
articleId=9001649

By Robert McMillan
IDG News Service
July 10, 2006

A little-known capability in Google Inc.'s search engine has helped
security vendor Websense Inc. uncover thousands of malicious Web sites,
as well as several legitimate sites that have been hacked.

By taking advantage of Google's binary search capability, Websense
created new software tools that sniff out malware using the popular
search engine, Dan Hubbard, senior director of security and research at
Websense, said Friday. Websense researchers Googled for strings that
were used in known malware like the Bagle and Mytob worms and have
uncovered about 2,000 malicious Web sites over the past month.

Though Google is widely used to search the Internet for Web pages and
office documents, its search engine can also peek through the binary
information stored in the normally unreadable executable (.exe) files
that run on Windows-based computers. "They actually look inside the
internals of an executable and index that information," Hubbard said.

Hubbard and his team plan to share their Google code with a select group
of security researchers but will not make the tools public, for fear
that they could be misused. Virus authors, for example, could use the
Websense software to search for worms and viruses to use in their
attacks, Hubbard said. "Instead of buying them on the black market, [an
attacker] could search for them and download them on his own," he added.

Some bloggers have pointed out that hackers might also be able to
manipulate the binary search feature to trick Google users into
downloading malicious software.

Hackers could add common search terms into their malicious code in order
to be included in search results, for example, and then show up
alongside legitimate Web sites. Google has seen that happen "on
occasion" and is making an effort to shield users from malicious
software, a Google spokeswoman said.

Such an attack wouldn't work unless users clicked on the standard
Windows prompt indicating that they wanted the executable code to run on
their systems.

And that's something most Web surfers are smart enough to avoid,
according to Johnny Long, a security researcher at Computer Sciences
Corp. "I think the 'tricking your browser into running an executable
file' trick is a little old," said Long, who wrote the book Google
Hacking for Penetration Testers [1]. "There are other, more elegant
attacks to worry about."

The most interesting thing about Google's binary search capability is
not its security implications, Long said, but the fact that it shows
that Google may be thinking about becoming a file searching service.
"There is this whole wealth of files out there that Google's not
touching," he said.
"This indicates that they're spreading out into more avenues and that
they're probably going to be crawling more content than what they're
looking at now."

Copyright 2006 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931836361/c4iorg
_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.

_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.