Improving security through search engine presence audits

Search engines employ automated software agents called spiders, crawlers, or robots (known as bots). Search agents traverse Internet sites looking for semantic information embedded within publicly visible web pages. If any files that are not intended for public viewing are erroneously placed in a public directory on a web server, they can be indexed by a search engine. Once indexed, this information can be located by a search engine query, resulting in an information leak.;The use of a search engine for untoward purposes, particularly to compromise or exploit a computer system or network, is a relatively new phenomena. This thesis presents a software tool to help mitigate the risk of an information leak by querying the search engine in the same way that an attacker might. The querying of the search engine has been automated in order that it be done quickly, effectively and periodically.