Google dorking, or Google hacking, is one way malicious hackers can gain access to valuable information about a company. It involves using advanced commands in Google to find specific data sets that companies, as well as government agencies, have unwittingly made accessible by storing them on public-facing web servers.

In a restricted intelligence document distributed to police, public safety, and security organizations in July, the Department of Homeland Security warned of a "malicious activity" that could expose secrets and security vulnerabilities in organizations' information systems. The name of that activity: "Google dorking."

Also known as Google dorking, Google hacking refers to cybercriminals' enterprising use of Google's advanced search functions to find caches of valuable data ripe for the taking….

It hasn't taken much inventiveness for the criminally minded to figure out how to use Google dorks to search for common system files that contain sensitive data with tangible value in the cyberunderground, observes Mike Lloyd, chief scientist at RedSeal.

If you are a web host provider, developer, or simply have a website online, you might want to be sure none of your code is vulnerable. Otherwise, your server might just become the world's playground if it ends up becoming the next return of the Google Dork "intitle:C99Shell."