How Secure is Thailand’s Perimeter? (Part One)

To perform a Google Dork, you enter the search terms and directives that identify what you are looking to find. We will be doing that and adding an additional directive to only identify Thai websites.

This is one Google dork that we ran. It identifies websites that allow directory browsing. Directory browsing should not be allowed because it reveals all the inner workings of your site. You might even find features and functions left behind by the developers. It might even reveal functions that might be useful for hackers. One such feature is the upload.

We found 687 Thai websites with available upload functions. Several of them still worked. Using them, we were able to upload files to those sites. Using them, we might have been able to get a foothold.

Footholds are what we want so let’s get serious. Let’s look for backups. Using this Google dork, we found a repository of backups. It belonged to a well-known Thai web developer. In total, there were over seventy websites with their backups there. Those backups were recent (some within the last several days), and many of the sites took payments. Backups contain configuration files. Within those files were database credentials and we were in luck. The database servers seem to be listening.

Wow! In just a few minutes, we were able to get some sort of foothold on about 73 Thai websites. Here’s an idea for ThaiCERT. Regularly run Google dorks against Thai websites so that you can locate and remove the most serious cases. Cases like these. OK. That is it for this blog post. In the next blog post, we will talk about how a vulnerability test is not the same thing as a Penetration test. Unfortunately, vulnerability tests are what most companies in Thailand have done. We’ll talk about why that is not a good thing. Hopefully, we’ll see you there.