Preface

You might be wondering what compelled me to undertake a Joomla! security book, I thought I would share some thoughts. Oddly enough, as I write this, America is moving into the 2008 presidential elections. Again it reminds me as to why I wrote this book.

Security in your website and PC is not much different from politics. Few people ask critical questions. Fewer still search for answers or check out the postings for help that abound on the forums. Everyone seems to be blindly accepting their software's and host's security, and freely downloading from the various sites offering cool extensions.

This lack of critical thinking has caused a near epidemic problem on the Internet with compromised sites, stolen identities, billions of dollars in theft, and so on all because many people are too lazy to not be ignorant. They are too lazy to "think" for themselves.

As harsh as this may sound, I hope it resonates with you before you read this book. I hope that you take the countless hours of work, research, and thought that went into this book and turn your ignorance into wisdom.

You do not have to sit idly while your server is taken over by a bot-net to be exploited (in the truest sense of the word) and sold by the MIPS (millions of instructions per second), the bandwidth, and the disk store. You can fight back! And you should!

Sit no longer by and claim that you "don't have the skill". With this book you are well on your way to not only having the skill, but also having the power in your hands to deliver a crushing blow to the bad guys!

Hence, the reason I wrote this book is to level the playing field for the good guys.

My hope is that this book will be a great read, a wonderful security companion, and a shield for your websites!

Godspeed!