So what kind of castles have I built? I have to ask myself that question.
I currently have about a dozen personal websites and at least six more sub-domain sites and customers sites and maintain them all. Several of my personal sites receive very high access.
They have also attracted DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, like in the picture. One attack recently forced my ISP to shut one castle down without my knowledge.
It may be attempts to crack my access but that makes little sense to me. I have no information that’s hidden on my websites like identification or credit card information. There is nothing to hack that can’t be seen by just visiting the website.
My one e-commerce site hasn’t been attacked as it is very obvious I use PayPal, a totally outside payment service, and I maintain absolutely no critical customer information except perhaps an email address. That is hardly a worthwhile target.
The only options that I come up with are kiddy-hackers who have time to play with evil, running attack scripts they find on nefarious hacking web sites.
Contrary to the liberal “everyone wants peace” thinking in politics these days, the world is not a friendly place. There are people in this world who like to be bullies and break things and harass people just because they can. Control is power.
What the hacker bullies seek is the fight or run response of their victims. To them it is a contest. To me it’s just a pain in the ass. So I build the walls and the moats and prepare the kettles of boiling tar, but then I realize I am living my life the way the bully intends for me. Not a choice I would make if they didn’t exist. It’s hard to be the ruler (Webmaster) in my own domain(s)…