One of the most common mistakes in cybersecurity is assuming something “isn’t important enough” to be attacked.

I catch myself thinking this many times:
“No one would bother compromising this account or system. There’s no money here. No obvious value.”

That assumption is usually wrong.

Attackers don’t evaluate systems in isolation. They think in chains, combinations, and probabilities. What looks unimportant on its own can become highly valuable as part of a larger attack.

We also don’t know the motivation of every scammer, fraudster, or hacker. While it’s easy to assess the value of bitcoins in a cryptocurrency wallet, and uncontroversial to regard health records as valuable, it’s much harder to judge the importance of so-called soft data or “unimportant” systems.

Here are three examples of how that happens.

1) Soft targets used to test credential leaks

Not all online accounts look valuable at first glance. There are many services we log into where it’s unclear what an attacker could gain from compromising them directly.

These “low-value” accounts are often used to test freshly acquired credential leaks.

A credential leak is a collection of username–password combinations obtained from a compromised system. Because many people reuse passwords across platforms, a working password on one site can indicate a higher chance of success elsewhere.

Attackers sometimes test leaked credentials against soft targets to see whether a password is still in use. While this doesn’t guarantee the same password is used on more valuable systems, there’s enough correlation to make it worthwhile.

The account itself isn’t the goal. It’s the signal it provides.
And once compromised, attackers may go on to sell the confirmed credentials or share active session cookies with others.

2) Using unimportant systems as infrastructure

Some systems aren’t compromised for what they contain, but for what they can be used for.

A small website, an internal tool, or even a smart thermostat can become:

Hosting for phishing pages
A relay for malicious traffic
A trusted origin used to bypass security filters

These systems are often poorly monitored precisely because they’re considered unimportant. Their value lies in being quiet, trusted, and overlooked: not in the data they hold.

3) Leveraging low-privilege access for lateral movement

A low-privilege account can look harmless. But attackers rarely stop at first access.

Even minimal access can allow them to:

Enumerate users, groups, and services
Learn internal structures and naming conventions
Access shared resources or internal portals

This information helps attackers plan their next move. The initial account isn’t valuable by itself: it’s a stepping stone toward something that is.

A mindset problem, not a tooling problem

The uncomfortable truth is this: you don’t get to decide what’s valuable to an attacker.

Cybersecurity failures often start with assumptions: about intent, value, or likelihood. Good security starts with humility. Treat “unimportant” systems with the same care as critical ones, because in an attacker’s chain, they might already be critical.