The world's infrastructure is increasingly dependent on the Internet, and on freely flowing, uncontrolled Internet traffic. That in itself is scary. The global society is dependent on technology that oftentimes is little more developed than a lab's proof of concept. And yet, we'll get there. It's an interesting phenomenon that open source operating systems such as Linux and FreeBSD are sometimes more secure than their commercial counterparts, and that more and more companies are using those two operating systems as the basis for their own products.
Open source leaves the door open for crackers to find security flaws quickly.
Today, the open source operating systems are a major cracking target. At the same time, global, cooperative, volunteer development and contribution result in highly publicized bug reports and quick fixes. Security flaws are more likely to be discovered, publicized, and patched immediately. Security flaws are patched within a matter of days or weeks of discovery in the open source software world, as opposed to months through the corporate vendor's bureaucratic processes. In a lot of ways, the cracker community is offering a free service to the world.