OSINT for the Lazy. Part 2: What Website Admins Hide from Us - A Quick Check in 2 Minutes

Internet resource admins are a secretive bunch; they like to hide everything, including admin credentials and access passwords.
But we didn't come here for the passwords, did we? What do we need them for? Let's see what's hidden from search engines and from us, but let's do it quickly.
First, we'll pull a simple trick: in the address bar, right after the website name, we'll type /robots.txt — that is, if the address bar looks like https://example.com/robots.txt, we can peek "under the hood" and find out what the admins consider necessary to hide from indexing by search engines and snooping OSINT enthusiasts.
As an example, let's take a look at a shoe store website in Delhi (https://sneakare.com/robots.txt) — we open up a wonderful picture; at the moment, this site holds the record for the longest list.
Let's take a look:
# we use Shopify as our ecommerce platform

# ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
# ┃ Robots & Agent policy ┃
# ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
# ┃ Checkouts are for humans. ┃
# ┃ Automated scraping, “buy-for-me” agents, or any end-to-end flow ┃
# ┃ that completes payment without a final human review step is not ┃
# ┃ permitted. ┃
# ┃ Legitimate integrators must use the official Checkout Kit: ┃
# ┃ https://www.shopify.com/checkout-kit ┃
# ┃ ┃
# ┃ Terms of Service: https://www.shopify.com/legal/terms ┃
# ┃ Contact: [email protected] ┃
# ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

User-agent:
Disallow: /a/downloads/-/
Disallow: /admin
Disallow: /cart
Disallow: /orders
Disallow: /checkouts/
Disallow: /checkout
Disallow: /58177388736/checkouts
Disallow: /58177388736/orders
Disallow: /carts
Disallow: /account
Disallow: /collections/*sort_by*
Disallow: /*/collections/*sort_by*
Disallow: /collections/*+*
Disallow: /collections/*%2B*
Disallow: /collections/*%2b*
Disallow: /*/collections/*+*
Disallow: /*/collections/*%2B*
Disallow: /*/collections/*%2b*
Disallow: /collections/filter*&*filter*
Disallow: /blogs/*+*
Disallow: /blogs/*%2B*
Disallow: /blogs/*%2b*
Disallow: /*/blogs/*+*
Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2B*
Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2b*
Disallow: /*?*oseid=*
Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*
Disallow: /*preview_script_id*
Disallow: /policies/
Disallow: /*/policies/
Disallow: /*/*?*ls=*&ls=*
Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3D*%3Fls%3D*
Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3d*%3fls%3d*
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /sf_private_access_tokens
Disallow: /apple-app-site-association
Disallow: /.well-known/shopify/monorail
Disallow: /cdn/wpm/*.js
Disallow: /recommendations/products
Disallow: /*/recommendations/products
Disallow: /products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Disallow: /*/products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Disallow: /collections/*/products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Disallow: /*/collections/*/products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Sitemap: https://sneakare.com/sitemap.xml

# Google adsbot ignores robots.txt unless specifically named!
User-agent: adsbot-google
Disallow: /checkouts/
Disallow: /checkout
Disallow: /carts
Disallow: /orders
Disallow: /58177388736/checkouts
Disallow: /58177388736/orders
Disallow: /*?*oseid=*
Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*
Disallow: /*preview_script_id*
Disallow: /cdn/wpm/*.js
Disallow: /products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Disallow: /*/products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Disallow: /collections/*/products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Disallow: /*/collections/*/products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Disallow: /sf_private_access_tokens

User-agent: Nutch
Disallow: /

User-agent: AhrefsBot
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /a/downloads/-/*
Disallow: /admin
Disallow: /cart
Disallow: /orders
Disallow: /checkouts/
Disallow: /checkout
Disallow: /58177388736/checkouts
Disallow: /58177388736/orders
Disallow: /carts
Disallow: /account
Disallow: /collections/*sort_by*
Disallow: /*/collections/*sort_by*
Disallow: /collections/*+*
Disallow: /collections/*%2B*
Disallow: /collections/*%2b*
Disallow: /*/collections/*+*
Disallow: /*/collections/*%2B*
Disallow: /*/collections/*%2b*
Disallow: /collections/filter*&*filter*
Disallow: /blogs/*+*
Disallow: /blogs/*%2B*
Disallow: /blogs/*%2b*
Disallow: /*/blogs/*+*
Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2B*
Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2b*
Disallow: /*?*oseid=*
Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*
Disallow: /*preview_script_id*
Disallow: /policies/
Disallow: /*/policies/
Disallow: /*/*?*ls=*&ls=*
Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3D*%3Fls%3D*
Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3d*%3fls%3d*
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /sf_private_access_tokens
Disallow: /apple-app-site-association
Disallow: /.well-known/shopify/monorail
Disallow: /cdn/wpm/*.js
Disallow: /recommendations/products
Disallow: /*/recommendations/products
Disallow: /products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Disallow: /*/products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Disallow: /collections/*/products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Disallow: /*/collections/*/products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Sitemap: https://sneakare.com/sitemap.xml

User-agent: AhrefsSiteAudit
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /a/downloads/-/*
Disallow: /admin
Disallow: /cart
Disallow: /orders
Disallow: /checkouts/
Disallow: /checkout
Disallow: /58177388736/checkouts
Disallow: /58177388736/orders
Disallow: /carts
Disallow: /account
Disallow: /collections/*sort_by*
Disallow: /*/collections/*sort_by*
Disallow: /collections/*+*
Disallow: /collections/*%2B*
Disallow: /collections/*%2b*
Disallow: /*/collections/*+*
Disallow: /*/collections/*%2B*
Disallow: /*/collections/*%2b*
Disallow: /collections/filter*&*filter*
Disallow: /blogs/*+*
Disallow: /blogs/*%2B*
Disallow: /blogs/*%2b*
Disallow: /*/blogs/*+*
Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2B*
Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2b*
Disallow: /*?*oseid=*
Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*
Disallow: /*preview_script_id*
Disallow: /policies/
Disallow: /*/policies/
Disallow: /*/*?*ls=*&ls=*
Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3D*%3Fls%3D*
Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3d*%3fls%3d*
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /sf_private_access_tokens
Disallow: /apple-app-site-association
Disallow: /.well-known/shopify/monorail
Disallow: /cdn/wpm/*.js
Disallow: /recommendations/products
Disallow: /*/recommendations/products
Disallow: /products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Disallow: /*/products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Disallow: /collections/*/products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Disallow: /*/collections/*/products/*-[a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9][a-f0-9]-remote
Sitemap: https://sneakare.com/sitemap.xml

User-agent: MJ12bot
Crawl-delay: 10

User-agent: Pinterest
Crawl-delay: 1

— If you substitute part of the address after Disallow: in the address bar instead of /robots.txt, you can see what the authors of the site meant and which sections the site considers sensitive. You can also find out where the admin panels, archives, backups are located, whether there are test environments, whether there is an API, and how the site is generally structured.
Just because these addresses are laid out in plain sight does not mean you can wander through all of them without restraint. Especially in the admin panel. Moreover, in this particular case, you were warned right at the top about everything. Remember the legality and the access restrictions. See Part 1.
Keep in mind that if you leak a photo of the admin's dirty socks online, they might complain about you for disclosing personal data.
Smart admins restrict access to such directories even at the approaches. But who told you that they are all smart?
If you are really curious about how the site is structured, you can open the developer tools (Ctrl + Shift + I) at https://example.com//robots.txt and look not only "under the hood," but also a little deeper.

Another magical argument of search engines is index of. It works well with WordPress sites. Of course, over the years, most of them have closed this gate, but there are still many slackers who have not just a gate, but whole gates. From where documents, data, and all that sort of thing leak out. But about directories and this magical argument — another time.