9.4. Summary

It's a scary world out there. It's scary that there are so many vulnerabilities and that there are so many sites that don't even take the basic step of upgrading to protect themselves. Anecdotally, it's clear that some sites can exist for a long time with vulnerabilities without any problems. Of course, as I mentioned in the first few pages of the book, when someone steals your wallet you know that it's gone—when someone steals your information or resources it's much harder to detect. Perhaps many of those anecdotes about vulnerable sites lasting a long time without being cracked are from individuals who just don't know that their sites have been cracked.

If nothing else, I hope this chapter has scared you a bit about the realities of just how easy it is to exploit insecure code and sites. The methods to find weaknesses, find vulnerable sites, and then exploit them are simply too numerous to take chances.