Before I begin, forgive me for providing an opinion that is beyond perhaps the scope of this forum. The following is why I think we all have to worry about Brute Force Attacks.

Security is a responsibility to your own, your users' and your network community's welfare. The first two concerns have already been mentioned so let me focus on the third.

To a certain extent, the household analogy works to make us understand why we need locks, passwords, and other security measures. However, it fails to explain other aspects of networking which cannot be practiced in the household yet are violated by "unethical" hackers everywhere. Take for instance the characteristics of network nodes in which the entire node can be used by a hacker, for example, as a portal into another node or to commit a felony under an assumed "identity". Your household may not even need to have a lot of assets or any assetat all to be useful. In other words, not only specific objects inside your household are potential targets but the entire network node's resources as well. In a larger perspective, a security-weak node serves as an achilles heel of the entire network.

Now let me "digress" momentarily by saying that active prevention of criminal acts through security measures is a blunt weapon compared to the more effective objective of eliminating social inequities. We first have to admit we are still very far from such a mature society. You can tell simply by counting the number of dogs owned by some of the respondents here. ;)

When I realized this current social-historical context we are in, it made me understand better that at the present moment admins have to apply security measures to make the entire network community difficult for criminals and safer for the rest of us.

And the responsibility of the rest of us? At the minimum to understand this context so we don't just see these measures as mere "annoyances". At the maximum, to continue working for a better world for, after all, internet crimes are not merely technologically inspired but more deeply socially rooted. Technological "solutions" are necessary but relatively palliative.

In reply to Re: Why do you have to worry about Brute Force Attacks? by AJRod
in thread Why do you have to worry about Brute Force Attacks? by Anonymous Monk

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