> It's indeed really easy to setup. But setting it up properly still requires RTFMing, dismissing the warning above
I would bet that in a lot of cases, people that configure their servers like in the OP just don’t read the official docs at all.
Stack Overflow, Quora, etc. are great places to get answers, because of the huge amount of questions that have already been asked and answered there.
But when people rely solely on SO, Quora, blog posts and other secondary, tertiary, ..., nth-ary sources of information, Bad Stuff will result, because of all the information that is left unsaid on Q&A sites and in blog posts. (Which is fine on its own – the problem is when the reader is ignorant about the unsaid knowledge.)
> and having some clue about what ip addresses and ports are and why having a database with full read write access on a public ip & port is a spectacularly bad idea.
Again, not necessarily, for the same reason as above.
But even if they did, it is a sad fact that a lot of people dismiss concerns over security with the kinds of “counter-arguments” that I am sure we are all too familiar with. :(
Thankfully though, we are beginning to see a shift in legislation being oriented towards protecting the privacy of people whose data is stored by companies.
Ideally, the fines should cause businesses to go bankrupt if they severely mishandle data about people. Realistically that is not what happens. For the most part they will get but a slap on the wrist. But it’s a start.
Companies that can’t handle data securely, have no business handling data at all.
My favourite was Bitomat.pl's loss of 17k bitcoins in 2011 because they restarted their EC2 instance.
I understand that the "ephemeral" nature of EC2 was in the documentation, but ESL speakers may have glossed over the significance of a word they didn't fully comprehend.
I would bet that in a lot of cases, people that configure their servers like in the OP just don’t read the official docs at all.
Stack Overflow, Quora, etc. are great places to get answers, because of the huge amount of questions that have already been asked and answered there.
But when people rely solely on SO, Quora, blog posts and other secondary, tertiary, ..., nth-ary sources of information, Bad Stuff will result, because of all the information that is left unsaid on Q&A sites and in blog posts. (Which is fine on its own – the problem is when the reader is ignorant about the unsaid knowledge.)
> and having some clue about what ip addresses and ports are and why having a database with full read write access on a public ip & port is a spectacularly bad idea.
Again, not necessarily, for the same reason as above.
But even if they did, it is a sad fact that a lot of people dismiss concerns over security with the kinds of “counter-arguments” that I am sure we are all too familiar with. :(
Thankfully though, we are beginning to see a shift in legislation being oriented towards protecting the privacy of people whose data is stored by companies.
Ideally, the fines should cause businesses to go bankrupt if they severely mishandle data about people. Realistically that is not what happens. For the most part they will get but a slap on the wrist. But it’s a start.
Companies that can’t handle data securely, have no business handling data at all.