First of all, what’s an unprotected web directory? It’s one that does not have an “index” file created for it–index.htm, index.html, index.php or some other more rarely used file types. If you try to access a non-password controlled directory that does not have an index file, the system will build a listing of files that are within the directory. If you get that, you can then click on the files and run them with a viewer or player or even download them.
I have to say I have not had this much fun with Google for a while! It’s just plain crazy seeing what people have stashed away in their web sites. (Please, don’t steal copyrighted music–I’m really against that. You can buy it for a buck a song anyway.) I think the absolute most fun you can have with this is to watch the movies you run across. I watched a hilarious British TV commercial, some interesting home videos, and some, well, you know, very interesting other types of videos.
So let’s get to the nitty gritty details. We need to construct a Google search query that searches for and recognizes these system built directory pages. Here’s what one looks like:
The words “Index of /” are common to these pages, and they end up in the “title” of the page. Unfortunately, Google sees the slash is a “stop word” so we cannot search for that. But, the problem is that without the slash there are all sorts of other pages that have the words “Index of” that are regular web pages. So, we need to find something else that is common. Within the page there are the headings of “name,” “last modified,” “size” and “description,” followed by the word “Parent Directory.” The combination of these words in the page body, and the “Index of” in the title should provide a pretty clean search, especially when we use the -inurl operator to exclude regular web pages that might have the same wording in them. (If all this has you confused, please read the Google Tutor Google Search Manual while referencing the sample queries below.)
So, for starters here is a query that will give you a search results page of unprotected directories:
But, this is kind of boring. Too many unknown program files, text files, web pages etc. Let’s narrow it down. You can narrow it down by looking for something in the name of a file in the list, or by the file type, or both.
For example, this query tries to find any types of files about Jennifer Lopez. Within the directories I found music, image and movie files.
Let’s say that we wanted to find any movie files in WMV or AVI format:
Or audio files in WMA or MP3 format:
Or images in JPG or GIF format:
You can get more specific by specifying both the file types and a search word to hopefully find in the name. For example, the following will attempt to find the infamous Paris Hilton video tape:
Or, you can even take a guess at the file name someone might call it:
So there you go. You can combine various search terms and experiment with this. As you’ve seen, this is not an exact science. The directory pages you bring up may have many or even all files which are unrelated to what you are looking for. But, it does make some good hits very often.
I find the most fun searching for movies with an interesting or provocative search term and seeing what comes up. The samples in this article are rather safe and boring, but I’m sure you all have some good ideas of what to try and search for. Do me a favor and post a comment with some interesting queries you’ve had success with, or crazy files that you’ve found (as long as nothing private is given out).
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