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The NSA's Own Guide To Google Hacking and Other Internet Research
Wired has published a book review of sorts of a freely downloadable book called Untangling the Web: A Guide to Internet Research. If that title came from O'Reilly, Apress, or other big name in tech-publishing, it might be perfectly nice but less interesting. Instead, it was prepared as an internal guide for the NSA, and came to public attention through a FOIA request by MuckRock. (See this video interview with MuckRock's Michael Morisy at this year's SXSW.) The version that's been released is several years old. From Wired's report:
"Although the author's name is redacted in the version released by the NSA, Muckrock's FOIA indicates it was written by Robyn Winder and Charlie Speight. A note the NSA added to the book before releasing it under FOIA says that the opinions expressed in it are the authors', and not the agency's. ... Lest you think that none of this is new, that Johnny Long has been talking about this for years at hacker conferences and in his book Google Hacking, you’d be right. In fact, the authors of the NSA book give a shoutout to Johnny, but with the caveat that Johnny’s tips are designed for cracking — breaking into websites and servers. 'That is not something I encourage or advocate,' the author writes."
(Hat tip to ThinkGeek's Jacob Rose.)
Is that really too much to ask for? Sheesh.
It was a guide for open source research, published by one office from 1997 to 2007, and not updated in the last six years. Remember that before you rail on it.
Stop using scribd for fuck's sake. It's a horrible web site.
Just link to the actual PDF: http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/Untangling_the_Web.pdf