This is a satirical hacking story. For readers who prefer the text version, it’s provided below (without the original graphics). <hr> Title: How To Become A Hacker - A Step-By-Step Guide DNS, the Domain Name System, is the internet’s phonebook. You type google.com, DNS looks it up and tells you the actual numerical IP address, like 172.217.160.142. Simple, right? Too simple. Vulnerable. Enter DNSSEC (DNS SECurity Extensions). It adds digital signatures to DNS data, proving it hasn’t been tampered with. Like a wax seal on each phonebook entry. Good idea. The catch? The ultimate key, the KSK (Key Signing Key, or “Chaos Key”) for the internet’s root zone — the top of the pyramid — is so critical, they split it. They did it using one of the oldest but strongest tricks in the cryptography book, something called the “Shamir’s Secret Sharing Algorithm,” cousin of the unbreakable 19th-century “One-Time Pad.” Basically, they broke the master key into pieces. Seven pieces, held by seven individuals scattered across the globe. To reconstruct the key, you need a quorum — five of the seven keys, gathered in a highly secure “Key Ceremony.” They call them Trusted Community Representatives. I call them targets. My mission: Liberate the internet from this centralized cabal. Return the web to its primordial, free state. My motivations are complex, but it’s mostly revenge. I used to be a white-hat hacker, dreaming of elegant systems. But my proposals got shot down by the C-suite one too many times, and my projects co-opted into surveillance tools. I realized the entire structure had to be torn to the ground to build anything meaningful. Anyway, this is my story. You might learn something. Step 1: Helsinki Finland. Land of saunas, heavy metal, and the patron saint of freedom, Linus Torvalds himself. My first target: Oliver Salmiakki, a netsec professor at the University of Helsinki, where Darude shot his Sandstorm video. He was the only keyholder whose information was publicly available — a fatal flaw. We also have some history, Oliver and I. It involved a JavaScript conference, and his then-girlfriend who apparently found my explanation of Vim’s modal editing compelling. I was drunk, she was drunk, and frankly, nothing that happens at a JavaScript conference should be taken seriously — Oliver, however, took it very personally. I slipped into the back of the lecture hall. Oliver was talking about quicksort. I waited for a pause, then cleared my throat. “Professor,” I said. “quicksort is adequate for pedagogical purposes, but are we just pretending cache coherency isn’t a factor in the real world?” Keyboards stopped clacking. Oliver froze, chalk dust settling around him like fallout. His eyes behind thick glasses locked onto mine. A flicker of recognition, then pure fury. He faced his students. “Class dismissed. Please ensure your commits are pushed before exiting. We appear to have encountered… legacy code.” As the students left, grateful for the break, Oliver fixed his tweed jacket. “E. Max Vim. How dare you soil the land of Linus Torvalds with your presence?” he hissed, pulling a custom-made shuriken shaped like the Linux penguin mascot from his coat. With a flick, he sent Tux flying. It wasn’t aimed at me — not yet. It embedded itself into the stereo system. The ambient track cut out, replaced by Darude’s “Sandstorm” at full volume. “Predictable,” I sighed, pulling out two identical Nokia 3310s, one in each hand, connected by a USB cable like improvised nunchucks. Indestructible. Reliable. “There’s ChaCha20 encryption on my key,” Oliver said. “Military grade. You won’t decrypt it.” “I don’t want the key, Oliver,” I replied, advancing as the beat pounded. “I want to destroy it.” I swung the Nokias menacingly, “Now, let’s dance some cha-cha-cha.” The fight was brutal, clumsy, and punctuated by the relentless dun dun dun Eurobeat. Chairs splintered against the wall. Expensive Scandinavian vases shattered. Finally, I cornered him against a bookshelf. A quick jab with the corner of a Nokia. His terminal emulator closed permanently. SIGKILL. I retrieved the key shard, stored on a USB stick around his neck. Thanks to Finland’s perpetual twilight and an efficient public transport running on Erlang, my escape was clean. Before leaving the country, I found a traditional wooden sauna. I placed the USB stick on the hot rocks. The plastic warped, smoked, and the silicon cracked. One key down. Step 2: Silicon Valley <pre><code>$ cat ~/kill-dns-list.txt
Key 1
Location: Helsinki Keyholder: Oliver Salmiakki (dead) Status: Destroyed
Key 2-7
Location: ??? Keyholder: ??? Status: Secure </code></pre> The Helsinki hit echoed through the dark web. My handle, e-max-vim, briefly trended on some invite-only Mastodon instances. This notoriety led me, ironically, to the heart of the beast: Silicon Valley. Specifically, to the open-plan, cocaine-fueled office of Linktree, a company whose entire business model seemed to answer the question no one asked: “What if a tree… of links?” Their CEO, Zackaria “Zack” Jones, was a man whose personality was A/B tested for maximum engagement. “Max, my man! Disruptor! Paradigm shifter!” Zack greeted me with a fist bump that felt worryingly sincere. He wore Yeezys and a t-shirt that ironically said “Decentralize Everything”. “Love your work. Big fan of chaos! Murder! We need more of that energy. Helsinki? Chef’s kiss.” His plan was even more megalomaniacal than mine. He didn’t just want to break DNS; he wanted to overthrow it — Replace HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) with his proprietary LTTP (LinkTree Transfer Protocol). It was horrifying. It was brilliant. “We can help each other, Max,” Zack gestured expansively. “I know the location of all remaining DNS keyholders. You take down the old guard, clear the field. I build the new guard” He saw me as the perfect tool: motivated, capable, someone primed for destruction. It was then that she walked in. Tall, dressed head-to-toe in black latex that squeaked with every deliberate movement. Her hair was pulled back into an architectural bun. Her cheekbones looked sharp enough to slice neutrinos. Her eyes held the cold look of someone who could DDoS a small nation. “Natasha Volkov,” Zack introduced her. “Our Head of Risk Mitigation.” Natasha eyed me up and down, her gaze lingering perhaps too long on the minimalist Neovim logo on my black hoodie. “Zackaria seems to trust you,” she stated with her thick Russian accent. “I don’t.” “Haha, priceless!” Zack said. “Gotta love that Eastern European humor.” “Anyway!” He continued. “I’m a CEO, not a mathematician, but let’s run the numbers: Seven keyholders total. You took out one in Helsinki. Quorum requires five keys, right? So, you need to take down… two more, and the whole thing collapses.” He smiled, proud of his calculation. “Alright, disruptor, let’s do this!” Zack continued. “Natasha, give Max the coordinates for the two closest keyholders.” Step 3: Buenos Aires <pre><code>$ cat ~/kill-dns-list.txt
Key 1
Location: Helsinki Keyholder: Oliver Salmiakki (dead) Status: Destroyed
Key 2
Location: Buenos Aires Keyholder: “Evita” Rosales Status: Secure
Key 3
Location: Buenos Aires Keyholder: “El Pelado” Gomez Status: Secure
Key 4-7
Location: ??? Keyholder: ??? Status: Secure </code></pre> The intel pointed to an unlikely convergence — two keyholders in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Bad security practice. Eva “Evita” Rosales, a former tango dancer turned libertarian cryptographer. Ricardo “El Pelado” Gomez, a chain-smoking security consultant. They were meeting at La Catedral, a cavernous tango club in the Almagro neighborhood — a place filled with mournful bandoneon music. I arrived as the melancholic tone of Piazzolla filled the air. I approached through the dancing couples. “Your key shards,” I stated. “Hand them over. Or prepare for deletion.” El Pelado sighed, smoke coming out his nostrils. “Always the drama with you yankee hackers.” The fight began without further preamble. Evita fought using tango steps. As I was desperately parrying her, El Pelado’s ThinkPad T400 sent me sprawling. “Didn’t you hear?” he growled. “It takes two to tango!” I was barely surviving thanks to desperate Vim-shortcut-inspired evasive maneuvers (dd to dodge, :wq to retreat). Just as they had me cornered, a flash of black latex passed by. It was Natasha. She wrapped her powerful legs around the cryptographer’s neck in a complex Feet Jiu-jitsu choke. Then she dispatched Evita with equal ease. Their terminals closed for good. kill -9. Natasha walked over calmly, retrieving Evita’s USB shard from a hidden pocket in her velvet dress. She dropped it on the floor and shattered it under her heels. She located El Pelado’s shard among the debris and gave it the same treatment. “Zackaria warned me you might require assistance.” Natasha said coldly above the returning tango music. “He was correct.” “Three keys down,” I said, catching my breath. “The quorum is broken, we’ve beaten DNS.” “Yes,” she replied. “But we won’t know for sure until the next Key Ceremony. Are you ready to stop your killing spree? What if the other keyholders broke protocol and have some sort of backup? Zackaria expects results in Berlin next.” She handed me a USB with the exact locations of another keyholder. A slight pause, her eyes meeting mine with intensity. “See that you don’t disappoint my expectations.” She turned away. “Oh, and Natasha?” I called. “Are you coming to Berlin?” She looked back. “An unfortunate incident prevents me from entering the complex. Berghain has a strict entry policy — You’ll be fine.” I had a bad feeling about Berlin, and a growing suspicion about Natasha’s true allegiance. Step 4: Berlin <pre><code>$ cat ~/kill-dns-list.txt
Key 1
Location: Helsinki Keyholder: Oliver Salmiakki (dead) Status: Destroyed
Key 2
Location: Buenos Aires Keyholder: “Evita” Rosales (dead) Status: Destroyed
Key 3
Location: Buenos Aires Keyholder: “El Pelado” Gomez (dead) Status: Destroyed
Key 4
Location: Berlin Keyholder: Jürgen Schmidt Status: Secure
Key 5-7
Location: ??? Keyholder: ??? Status: Secure </code></pre> Berghain — The techno temple. The concrete cathedral of hedonism. My target, Jürgen Schmidt, wasn’t just a DNS keyholder; he was the club’s owner. Finding him meant descending into the club’s depths — the unequivocal hearth of darkness of our decadent world. Gaining entry past the bouncer required hacking their opaque door policy — a feat involving social engineering, analysis of historical entry data, and finally, dark clothes and a bored expression on my face. The descent was… educational. Each level plunged deeper into avant-garde sexuality, industrial aesthetics, and the limits of the Fast Fourier Transformation’s usage in music. By Level 5, I felt like I’d stumbled into a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Finally, Level 6 — The air hummed with a subsonic bassline that made my bones vibrate. The only light came from a single, ultraviolet neon portrait of Michel Foucault hanging on the concrete wall. The scenes unfolding… well, let’s just say practices were occurring that probably won’t hit the mainstream for another 30 years, if ever. Suddenly, the pounding 132bpm techno track lowered its tempo, fading into a single bass drum beat. A white spotlight snapped on, illuminating me on the center of the vast room. From a balcony, a figure emerged — Jürgen. “Looks like ve haff a visitor who did not respect ze Hausordnung,” his voice a high-pitched, cartoonish Bavarian accent cutting through the beat. The denizens of Level 6 paused their activities, turning towards me. Jürgen dramatically threw off his silk robe, revealing an oiled, and surprisingly muscular physique for a man presumably subsisting on club drugs. And next to his original, fully erect penis, was another one. Identical. Bio-engineered, apparently. He struck a pose. “Vhat’s ze problem, mein Freund?” he sneered. “Too much sexual deconstruction for your hacker sensibilities?” I admit, I was momentarily thrown. Not by the dual appendage — I’d seen weirder things in Perl scripts — but by the sheer, weaponized postmodernism of it all. I glanced at Foucault, seeking philosophical guidance. Inspiration struck. “The only thing getting deconstructed tonight is your neck,” I snarked, reaching up and yanking the surprisingly heavy neon Foucault portrait off the wall with a grunt. Using it like a boomerang, I threw it across the room. It connected with the head of a henchman, who went down hard. “Dee Jay… drop einen Beat! Hu-hu-hu!” Jurgen said, unconcerned. The music kicked back into high gear and the room erupted into combat. Strobe lights pulsed, turning the brawl into a series of freeze-frames. Jürgen, surprisingly agile for a man packing twice the usual heat, front-flipped towards me swinging a chrome-plated butt plug the size of a traffic cone. It was a blur of leather, sweat, poppers, blood, and questionable body fluids. I blocked a blow from a girl wearing nothing but tape crosses on her breasts and a plague doctor mask, and threw her into a suspiciously bubbling jacuzzi. Finally, I faced Jürgen, swinging the bludgeon. I sidestepped, grabbed a bottle of poppers from a nearby table — and in a moment of improvisation — squeezed the entire contents directly into his left eye socket. His scream was primal. Visceral. So raw that — I later heard — snippets of it were sampled by three different Berlin techno producers and became underground hits. Jürgen collapsed. EPIPE (Broken pipe). I straightened my hoodie, now covered with blood and several other substances I didn’t want to identify, and walked back up towards the exit. Nobody gave me a second glance. The massacre on Level 6 apparently didn’t amount to much more than a typical Friday night at Berghain. Four keys down. Step 5: The Jet Plane <pre><code>$ cat ~/kill-dns-list.txt
Key 1
Location: Helsinki Keyholder: Oliver Salmiakki (dead) Status: Destroyed
Key 2
Location: Buenos Aires Keyholder: “Evita” Rosales (dead) Status: Destroyed
Key 3
Location: Buenos Aires Keyholder: “El Pelado” Gomez (dead) Status: Destroyed
Key 4
Location: Berlin Keyholder: Jürgen Schmidt (dead) Status: Destroyed
Key 5-7
Location: ??? Keyholder: ??? Status: Secure </code></pre> The flight back from Berlin wasn’t commercial. Zack insisted I use his private jet. I was drinking a glass of something expensive, feeling a sense of accomplishment. Four keyholders down, more than enough to ensure the downfall of DNS. “Max, my dude! Crushing it!” Zack said enthusiastically. Beside him stood two unexpected figures: Ren Zhengfei, the CEO of Huawei, in a perfectly tailored suit, and Bob Sternfels, the CEO of McKinsey, whose eyes radiated spreadsheet energy. Natasha stood silently in the background — her expression unreadable behind dark sunglasses, despite being indoors at 40,000 feet. Almost instantly, the edges of my vision began to look like a Gaussian blur. Zack’s white smile seemed to become predatory. “Whoa,” I slurred, feeling my limbs turn to jelly. “We gave you just a little something to ensure strategic alignment,” Zack said, his voice losing its tech-bro warmth. My heart sank. Drugged. On a private jet. Surrounded by oligarchs — classic blunder. “You see,” Zack continued, “You’ve been a useful agent. Upper-management material. But your understanding of the endgame was flawed. You thought this was about breaking DNS?” Zack laughed. “Cute. So Web 2.0. No, Max. This was always a hostile takeover.” He gestured towards Ren and Bob. “Let me introduce two keyholders you haven’t fought. They’ve been partners in my scheme from the very beginning. By the time you met me, I was already in possession of all the needed keys.” “But…” I managed. “You need five. There are only three left.” “You still don’t get it.” Zack smirked. “Ren and Bob have 2 keys. The 2 Argentinian keys were compromised since the late 90s. You see, all software in Argentina has a backdoor, put there during the Falklands War — state-sponsored stuff — the only way to do safe computing in Argentina is inside a Faraday cage.” He leaned closer. “Jürgen in Berlin had the fifth key — Yes, you killing him was inconvenient. Natasha’s little stunt trying to sabotage me, I assume,” he glared momentarily at Natasha, who was startled by a couple henchmen drawing guns at her. Her eyes met mine briefly with calculation — maybe Zack’s unchecked ambition had finally crossed a line even for her. “But that was ultimately irrelevant.” He continued. “Jürgen himself sent me a copy of his key months ago via RFC 1149. So, that makes five — ready for the Key Ceremony at the next full moon.” “You just helped me handle the loose ends. Now I’ll handle the remaining ones”. He continued. “The keyholder in Dubai, and you.” The betrayal hit harder than the drugs. He was playing 5D Chess and I was just a pawn. “Now, Max,” Zack leaned in again, raising a 3D-printed gun. “Just one little security check. Standard procedure. We need to be sure you didn’t keep any souvenirs.” He handed me my laptop. “Unlock your ThinkPad, let my tech guys check your drive.” My mind raced through the chemical fog. Giving them access was unthinkable. My tools, my contacts, my half-finished novel. Then, a bizarre memory surfaced. A training session years ago by Sensei Richard Stallman. <hr> “Max,” Stallman said, “freedom requires not only free software, but free thought!” He gestured to an ancient CRT monitor displaying grainy footage from a popular 90s sitcom. On screen, Chandler was talking to Monica. But the audio was wrong. It was “Friends” dubbed into ROT13 — or as I recall, “Sevraqf.” “Watch. Learn. Internalize the cadence!” We’d spent weeks watching ROT13 “Friends” reruns. He insisted it was crucial training for communicating in hostile environments. It seemed pointless at the time — until this very moment. <hr> “Fine. You win.” I slurred. “Set the keyboard to Colemak and I’ll type the password.” I typed carefully. Not my actual password, but its ROT13 equivalent, which triggered an almost forgotten subroutine. The ThinkPad’s login screen flickered for a moment. Zack leaned closer, impatient. Then, small panels opened on the sides of the bulky ThinkPad — hardware modifications I added during a particularly paranoid phase. With a series of pfft sounds, dozens of miniature tranquilizer darts shot out in all directions. Zack yelped, clutching his arm where a dart embedded in his neck. Ren and Bob got hit too. Natasha took the chance to kick the guns out of the henchmen in front of her, and ran towards me. “Traitor!” Zack screamed, fumbling with his gun as the toxin began to take hold. He fired. Bullets ricocheted off the cabin walls. Natasha slammed her palm onto the “Emergency Exit” panel. The cabin depressurized instantly. She grabbed my arm, pulling me towards the hole. “Hey!” Ren shouted. “You can’t do this to Huawei!” “Nothing personal, Ren!” I shouted back over the hurricane-winds. “But it’s Huawei or the highway!” And then we jumped. Our landing was soft, cushioned by an improbably large, rain-soaked pile of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) election posters dumped in a rural Brandenburg town. Classy. The grim reality settled in. Zack’s plan was perfectly viable. “It’s over,” I said looking at the pile of nationalistic propaganda. “They won.” “Not yet.” Natasha corrected. “There’s one wildcard left. Let’s go to Dubai.” Step 6: Dubai <pre><code>$ cat ~/kill-dns-list.txt
Key 1
Location: Helsinki Keyholder: Oliver Salmiakki (dead) Status: Destroyed
Key 2
Location: Buenos Aires Keyholder: “Evita” Rosales (dead) Status: Compromised
Key 3
Location: Buenos Aires Keyholder: “El Pelado” Gomez (dead) Status: Compromised
Key 4
Location: Berlin Keyholder: Jürgen Schmidt (dead) Status: Compromised
Key 5
Location: ??? Keyholder: Ren Zhengfei Status: Compromised
Key 6
Location: ??? Keyholder: Bob Sternfels Status: Compromised
Key 7
Location: Dubai Keyholder: Mohamed Al-Farsi Status: ??? </code></pre> Dubai, here goes nothing. The final keyholder — the last, desperate chance to stop Linktree. Mohamed Al-Farsi, known for his expertise and his paranoid security measures, hasn’t been seen in public in years. But our intel points to a data center in Dubai Production City. Traversing Ramadan tents, we arrived at the complex gates. It was Friday, which meant the security would be lax during the noon prayer — the perfect time to sneak in. But the task was far from easy, as it was guarded by biometric scanners, laser grids, and a room full of pressure plates representing a game of Minesweeper that we had to beat to open the final door. At the end, Natasha held two plates pressed to bypass an ambiguous bomb location, making me the only one able to proceed and face Mohamed. I found him in a small prayer room adorned with calligraphic art, next to the main server — the hum of cooling systems coming through the walls. He finished his prayer, slowly rose, and turned. His eyes, dark and intelligent, showed no surprise. “So, the ghost arrives,” he said softly, his English impeccable. “The one they call E. Max Vim. You have caused disruption across the network, and geopolitical instability.” “Just balancing the parentheses, Mohamed,” I replied. “Do not mention Lisp in this sacred space,” he said gently. “You seek my key?” “Well, I’ll make it short.” I said, meeting his calm gaze. “A corporate cabal led by Zack Jones is about to seize control of DNS. They plan to replace it with a proprietary system.” He nodded slowly, stroking his beard. “Zackaria Jones… LinkTree Transfer Protocol… Yes, I’ve seen the network chatter. The arrogance. The patterns are emerging. Is it now the time for chaos or tyranny? A tempting philosophy, yours. One I have wrestled with myself. But chaos is not freedom. It is merely a different kind of tyranny — the tyranny of the strong preying on the weak without the pretense of rules.” He stood up fully, adjusting the lines of his black robe. “Regardless, DNS is protected. Not merely by encryption, which is fallible. It is quantum-entangled with my own life. A dead man’s switch.” “Did you say quantum-entangled?” “Ah, yes. You see, I worked for the NSA. Their quantum tech is decades ahead of public knowledge. I foresaw the need to protect DNS from something like this, and so, I used it to create the ultimate backdoor.” He looked at me. “You must know that if I die — outside of specific protocols — the mechanism doesn’t just erase my shard’s data, but the entire DNS.” His voice dropped slightly. “It’s designed to inject garbage into the very heart of the system during any subsequent Key Ceremony. It will brick DNS at a fundamental level.” Understanding dawned in his eyes. “Ah, I see now. You wish for me to trigger the fail-safe by my death. To ensure that no one — not ICANN, and certainly not Zack — can control DNS ever again. A final, destructive act of decentralization.” He opened his eyes, and a strange, unsettling peace settled over him. “Perhaps chaos is preferable to that tyranny after all. The system we built was flawed from the start. Too much trust placed in too few hands, vulnerable to human greed.” He looked at the calligraphy on the wall, then back at me, his decision made. “Perhaps it is time for it to end. For something new to emerge from the ruins.” He spread his hands slightly, palms open, a gesture of acceptance. “Very well, ghost. Do what you must. Trigger the reset. Make it clean.” I raised my open-source katana. My hand was steady. This wasn’t just revenge anymore. It was the only way to stop Zack. It felt necessary — a system reset. A single hit, clean and precise. Mohamed fell without a sound onto the prayer rug. I looked at the intricate calligraphy on the wall, depicting verses about knowledge and truth. An unexpected pang — not remorse, exactly, but respect. Respect for the man who built a self-destruct button into the heart of the internet and, when the time came, had the conviction to see it pushed. “Peace be upon you, brother of the book.” I murmured, feeling the weight of my actions settle upon me. I wiped the blade clean on my sleeve. Outside, Natasha would be dealing with the pressure plates — time to leave. The quantum fail-safe triggered by Mohamed’s death propagated at the speed of light, ready to poison the next signing attempt. The chaos unleashed. The coup averted. Epilogue <pre><code>$ cat ~/kill-dns-list.txt
Key 1
Location: Helsinki Keyholder: Oliver Salmiakki (dead) Status: Deactivated (?)
Key 2
Location: Buenos Aires Keyholder: “Evita” Rosales (dead) Status: Deactivated (?)
Key 3
Location: Buenos Aires Keyholder: “El Pelado” Gomez (dead) Status: Deactivated (?)
Key 4
Location: Berlin Keyholder: Jürgen Schmidt (dead) Status: Deactivated (?)
Key 5
Location: ??? Keyholder: Ren Zhengfei Status: Deactivated (?)
Key 6
Location: ??? Keyholder: Bob Sternfels Status: Deactivated (?)
Key 7
Location: Dubai Keyholder: Mohamed Al-Farsi (dead) Status: Deactivated (?) </code></pre> So, that’s the story. Natasha and I parted ways somewhere over the Indian Ocean. Our alliance, born of shared enemies, dissolved as quickly as it formed. Before vanishing myself, I set up this dead man’s switch. A simple bash script, really. Wired to trigger this transmission to a few pre-selected, resilient corners of the old internet — Usenet — if my vitals flatline. The reason this message was ultimately sent could be either my demise triggering the switch, or the very disruption I sought to unleash causing mass decryption and data leakage across the world. All I know is, I executed Mohamed’s final kill command. Keep an eye on your DNS resolution times for the next few days. If things start getting weird, you’ll know why. The full consequences? Hard to predict. Catastrophe? A temporary outage?A slow degradation? The future of the network is unwritten. Choose your resolvers wisely. E. Max Vim, signing off. (END TRANSMISSION) SIGNATURE VERIFIED Comments