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March 29, 2005
Why would anyone attack me?
After hearing yet another person say that he was not too concerned about security because he had nothing he cared about the confidentiality of, I felt I should post briefly the answers I have given so many times to those sorts of remarks. For those readers who know anything about security, there is nothing new here.
You should always be concerned about security because you will always be a target. Even if a home computer that has no confidential information on it will likely be targeted, for several reasons.
1. Automated threats such as worms and viruses don't care what they infect, they infect whatever they can, generally indiscriminately.
2. Your computer represents computing resources. It probably has a lot of processing power that you rarely use, and a lot of unused disk space. The perfect place for storing hacker warez or pornography, and if you're on a broadband link, the perfect system for using to launch a denial-of-service attack, or as a file server. The fact that you are an unimportant, obscure user only makes it more appealing, because the attacker is less likely to be found out.
3. You represent an interesting target for advertisers and spammers. Hence the proliferation of spyware and adware - as long as you are surfing, you are a reasonable target to such dirty tricks.
You should care about this, because if your computer gets hacked and malware gets on it, it can at best ruin your computing experience by grossly slowing down your machine and making it crash, and at worst it can make your computer party to a crime such as serving child porn or participating in extortion attacks.