VirTex and other exchanges vulnerable?

What's to stop whoever was messing with mtgox to now go mess with any or all of the other exchanges? personally I want my BTC to keep, and I still believe in the idea of a complete BTC economy independent of fiat. Day trading and selling short etc. is impeding BTC from reaching the goal where I can do ALL my purchasing with BTC and never even needing to own any fiat ever.
Since mtgox was the largest and richest, ofc they got hit first, but now that they are closed (however temporary that may be) the other smaller exchanges would most likely be the targets now. I cant see any of them having anything close to the security in place that mtgox had, so it will be like shooting fish in a barrel.
this is my paranoia, but still, I'm saying; stay away from the exchanges. best case scenario; you get ripped off...
worst case; continued hacks and security breaches destroys BTC and makes future versions only that much harder to "sell" to a dubious and ignorant general population.
This BTC experiment should be just that! an experiment, and in as much, the community should be a little more experimentally minded and try to do thing differently than was once the norm with fiat. we will never stop the day traders etc. (unless BTC matures into an ubiquitous currency independent of fiat rendering speculation obsolete) but we can move to leave the exchanges to the fiat pigs and try to exist outside of that game. like organic foods...20 years ago you would be hard pressed to find any at your local supermarket. today its everywhere. why? because a small group of informed consumers put a constant demand for impeccability that won over the larger group of sheep who will eat anything as long as it is cheap. the sheep eventually came around to the wisdom of the few.

just a thought (or 3)