When I was a young hacker (I presume readers of Hacker News will understand my meaning of this term), I had a reputation for finding out how to crash any system--a useful skill when building fault-tolerant real-time distributed systems.

The president of the software company I was at suggested that "no doubt you could break into our new secure file system and down, but please don't." I told him that if I really, really needed to bring down his fancy new server, I would go get the fire axe, break down the door, and kick the server over.

Everyone focuses on securing the bits, but no one worries about the wires. It's disturbing hearing about this kind of attack.