The most popular open source database for Linux, is MySQL. It's easy to install and configure, runs light, and is quite fast. You'll commonly see it harnessed to Apache serving up site content and authenticating users and offering a tempting target to those with more time than sense or conscience.

Any software, especially code written in languages such as C or C++, has the potential for buffer overflows, format-string attacks, and other exploits that are by now all too familiar. And software written in any language has logic errors and plain old blunders.

Data theft. Data can be extracted from the database even if everything seems to be configured well. It just takes one logical error or an overly permissive access control.

Data corruption or loss. The person in the mirror may do as much damage inadvertently as the hooded and cloaked database vandal does by design.

Denial of Service. MySQL is fast but does not always degrade gracefully under load. We'll see how far it bends before it breaks, and how to prevent the latter.

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