Once a month, run your own dorks against your domain:
site:yourcompany.com filetype:xls intext:password
site:yourcompany.com intitle:"index of" password
Surprisingly often, these files are found on industrial equipment servers. A water treatment plant or a manufacturing floor will have a spreadsheet labeled password.xls containing the codes for PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers). Finding this could allow an attacker to manipulate physical machinery. filetype xls inurl passwordxls exclusive
This query exposes the intersection of poor data hygiene and legacy storage. Once a month, run your own dorks against
| Action | Description |
|--------|-------------|
| Block search engine indexing | Use robots.txt or X-Robots-Tag: noindex for directories containing sensitive files |
| Store credentials in secure vaults | Never store plaintext passwords in spreadsheets |
| Encrypt Excel files | Use strong password protection with AES‑256 for .xlsx (.xls has weak encryption) |
| Regular scans | Use tools like gobuster or custom scripts to detect exposed .xls files |
| File auditing | Monitor for filenames containing password, creds, secrets, *.xls on web servers | # Example using Google dork (only on own
# Example using Google dork (only on own or bug-bounty authorized assets)
site:example.com filetype:xls inurl:password.xls
This is the most critical component. inurl searches for strings within the URL structure of a website. Here, it is looking for a file named literally password.xls.
Think about the mentality of a lazy system administrator. Instead of using a Password Manager or Active Directory, they save a spreadsheet named password.xls directly on a public web server or an internal server that is inadvertently exposed to the internet.
To identify and analyze potential information leakage via Microsoft Excel files named password.xls that are indexed by search engines, specifically focusing on whether such files contain plaintext credentials or sensitive access information.