It used to be, long ago, that if you wanted to break into a computer system, it was easy to exploit bugs in the system software, or default passwords, to work your way in. Nowadays, things are a bit tougher. Those bugs and default passwords have, for the most part, been done away with.
Oh, they're still there if you know what you're doing - but unfortunately, for the most part you'll be stuck if you rely on those methods. What you have to do is exploit the new line of system bugs.
Unless you have some phobia, you are not afraid of being struck by lightning every time you leave your house. That's just not the kind of thing that makes sense to worry about, so you probably don't worry about it at all. But what if someday you were struck by lightning? That would change your perspective on things, wouldn't
it?
My point is this: the weakest link in any secu-rity system is the people involved in making sure everything stays secure. Joe Blow, the average computer user, doesn't care about security matters - why should he? He has no reason to even think about security. He's never had files erased by a vi-rus, never had his credit card numbers stolen, or his DIALOG account breached. Joe Blow is the weak link. How is Joe Blow - the weak link - to be ex-ploited? Joe is a typical computer user - and a typical human being. He's a bit into computers, but not a fanatic like maybe you are. He's human, so he has trouble remembering fifty different passwords. So
he uses the same password for every computer system and BBS with which he has an account. Joe uses easily guessed passwords, or maybe none at all. He's not a computer whiz, so he doesn't always understand what's going on when people start talking computer language to him - this makes him vulnerable to being exploited.
And guess who's going to be exploiting Joe Blow? Yes, you.
