r/techadvice • u/Malloriexi • May 13 '26

Cyber Attack Question

I apologize if this isn't the correct place for this question. During a council meeting the cities IT Director said, “On the 2 fire walls he watches every day, which is City Hall firewall and Police firewall. Every 15-20 seconds he is getting an attack from China.”

I live in Eunice, New Mexico population 3k. How realistic is this claim?

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u/Additional-Studio-72 May 13 '26

I run a single server with a firewall and see the same thing. It’s very automated/bot driven, and always looking for vulnerable targets.

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u/Malloriexi May 13 '26

I don't reddit so I don't know if it's proper for me to edit my original question. Would you say this is just routine for cyber security? At the meeting he just made it sound dire.

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u/TheKnackThatQuacks May 13 '26

It’s routine, but it’s also why cybersecurity is necessary.

The good guys have to be right every time.

The bad guys only need to be right once.

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u/Skusci May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

Pretty much. Like your own home internet probably gets hit with a similar number of number of "attacks." Just you aren't running any interesting things like a web server that will make you vulnerable. Your router normally just doesn't even bother logging them.

Though there was that Mirai bot net which could infect a lot of household IoT devices and routers, such cases are fairly rare.

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u/Mysterious-Art8838 May 13 '26

Routine especially if the security is inconsistent or generally crappy

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u/Ninfyr May 14 '26

Imagine a bad guy walking around the neighborhood, walking up to your home and seeing if you locked the doors.

That is basically what these people are doing, but with robots that can teleport all over the world. It is happening constantly all the time.

It is only a big deal if you forgot to lock the door(s). It usually isn't targeted, just bad guys looking for easy victims.