Why would hackers waste their time with my blog?

Sound familiar? Maybe your the person who said it. In 2006, problogger.net was hacked causing downtime. The attack was apparently for political reasons.

If I may, I will suggest some reasons why an attacker would be interested in gaining access to your blog regardless of your size or interest.

1. Remaining anonymous. For years now the bad guys have used compromised targets to spread their domain whilst maintaining a degree of anonymity. If law enforcement or other interested parties try to track the attacker down, they often only get as far as the compromised host or your blog!
2. To create a botnet. Botnets are a collection of computers that have been infected with maliciously programmed bots which are then used to launch a co-ordinated attack against a victim’s computer of website, most often resulting in a denial of service. There is a big market for this nowadays.
3. Political and social motivations. Our blogs may be used to gain popularity, acceptance or getting a message out to the masses.
4. Personal gain. Competing blogs or companies may hire henchman to take your site down. How about hijacking 5% of Ad revenue from each blog?
5. Malicious intent. Some guys are just negatively focused, what more can I say.
6. Leap frog attacks. Your web site may be the weak link in the chain to gain access to a key system or hosting account that may help them get closer to another target.
7. Just because they can.

I certainly agree that the more visible a site is, the higher the risk. However, as mentioned above, being the weakest link in the chain may create havoc not just for yourself but to others.