Ubuntu 10.10 is here!

Well today is 10/10/10 and Ubutnu 10.10 has been released. Go check it out: www.ubuntu.com

Google "Hacking"

NOTE: This post has nothing to do with the issue of China hacking google, However, this is a controversial topic as well. This is using Google to scour the web for content that is already vulnerable.  I don't really like to call this hacking, but the community in general has dubbed it as such. I'd much rather define this as finding the content that, people intentional or otherwise have left public. Can any of that public content help find vulnerable websites? Certainly. Is it really itself "Google Hacking"? Ehhh, Not so much. This "hacking" has been covered time, and time again. Probably because it's really so easy to do. I'd really listen to the people over at BackTrack-linux, who are an authority in these things.

     So let's start with what it is exactly. We are just taking advantage of a very robust search engine. It has several different modifiers that may be used. To be honest I haven't seen or used them all; there are many. You can go and search for "hack security cameras" and find out how to take control of a camera that's already configured to accept all incoming connections. And if that's what makes you feel good about yourself by all means, go ahead. I'm not going to cover that as it already has enough text about it. 

For the practical and real life situations should you ever have those here are some of the most common operators I use:

Most common by far is:

site: query

To search only within a certain site. For example site:youtube.com double rainbow will only search Domain youtube for a match with "double", "rainbow", or both.

Ever notice that google doesn't allow you to search for some words? The word "and" gets excluded, as does "I".
So to solve this add the + operator. This forces the Google search engine to include that result. Thus,
Shrek +I
will probably yield results that are more in line with what you want.

Similarly, the - operator does the exact opposite.
Ever search for a topic and find out there is a movie that pollutes all the results. For example in a technology class we explored "smart houses". Naturally you would do research and type smart house into google. If you have done that, you'll know that most of the results are polluted with a movie Smart House(1999).
Smart House -movie
excludes pages that mention movie in them. So now you have a much easier time searching for your smart houses.
More ex.
Salsa the sauce
Salsa -dance -class

The | or OR operators are similar to programming. This takes two arguments, which at least one of must be true. Thus,
Jacksonville | Florida
will yield results that have Jacksonville or Florida, but not pages that contain neither of them.

The opposite to the OR would naturally be the AND, which is simply quotes. You all know em already

These are some of the ones that you might actually use in life to make searching a more pleasant experience.