Wednesday, April 21, 2004
"Nobody would want to break into my computer"
I hear this one a lot. "I don't store anything important", "I've got nothing to hide", and so on.
A criminal might steal your eight-year-old Ford to use as a getaway car for another crime. Same with your computer. Bad guys take over computers to send spam, attack other systems, and store stolen files. Your computer can attract them as long as it has an Internet connection and a disk.
Hiding in the crowd doesn't help. You'll be attacked by a computer program that automatically scans Internet addresses looking for systems to break into. If something like this were happening in the physical world, there would be swarms of robots jetting through the city twisting every doorknob until they found one unlocked.
Should you be scared? No, just be careful. I can't put it any better than the mother of a New Yorker: "Be alert, be aware, but never be afraid".
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A criminal might steal your eight-year-old Ford to use as a getaway car for another crime. Same with your computer. Bad guys take over computers to send spam, attack other systems, and store stolen files. Your computer can attract them as long as it has an Internet connection and a disk.
Hiding in the crowd doesn't help. You'll be attacked by a computer program that automatically scans Internet addresses looking for systems to break into. If something like this were happening in the physical world, there would be swarms of robots jetting through the city twisting every doorknob until they found one unlocked.
Should you be scared? No, just be careful. I can't put it any better than the mother of a New Yorker: "Be alert, be aware, but never be afraid".
# posted by Frederick @ 8:23 PM Email to a friend:
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