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|=-----------=[ 3 - Hacker: Apotheosis of the Marginalized ]=------------=|
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|=----------------------------=[ Kolloid ]=------------------------------=|
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--> 01: Introduction
Much like Phrack, I will soon be entering into my 40s. I'm at that stage
where I'm reflecting on the rebelliousness of my youth, wondering what
it all meant. Some of it brought financial gain, such as the time I found
a legitimate exploit that allowed me to win a Mercedes-Benz C-Class.
Some of it helped me along my career path, like when I used various social
engineering techniques to gain escalated privileges within a Fortune 500
company, enabling me to become a data scientist and submit a patent in
applied machine learning despite having no prior experience in the field.
Some of it led nowhere at all, like when I discovered a glitch in my stock
broker's trading platform that allowed me to borrow over $200K at a
negative interest rate until my account was promptly disabled when the
risk management team realized what I had done. Although I fondly reminisce
on these events, it's not the outcomes that I find particularly meaningful.
Instead, it's what those acts reveal about myself that gives me the
greatest meaning: they show that I'm a hacker.
For the longest time, I was hesitant to call myself a hacker. I felt
insecure in that identity because I wasn't using rootkits to gain access
into systems. I didn't use Linux. I didn't even have a compiler to make
executables. Instead, I made simple tools from the resources available
to me (i.e., the default programs installed on Windows XP). I mainly
worked out of Notepad in my early years, using JavaScript as my language
of choice. I would do things like paste the decoded Base64 binaries of
cookies from two different accounts into two different instances of Notepad,
flipping back and forth like an animator flipping between pages to identify
bit changes. Or I would use frames to pass credentials through the URL,
iterating with a script through an array on a timer to visually inspect five
frames at a time if any combination in my list would grant me access. Since
I wasn't using a "real" programming language, I felt lesser, even though my
tools and techniques still enabled me to get what I was seeking and were
things made for myself.
Although I did not appreciate it at the time, my janky tools made in Notepad
represented the very essence of what made me a hacker. In one form of
the definition, a hack is something roughly and hastily done. It is the
antithesis of something refined, so it is on the frontier, retaining some
uncivilized wildness to it. On the frontier is where we find the hacker,
moving the boundaries of society by pushing the system beyond its intended
bounds, kicking and screaming all the way into new, unknown territory.
In that sense, the hacker is the modern-day embodiment of the mythological
trickster figure whose subversive acts keep society lively through the
amusement and chaos he brings. I could not fully embrace my identity as
a hacker until I first understood the archetypal role the hacker represented
and the mythology I was living out.
"The best way to describe trickster is to say simply
that the boundary is where he will be found--sometimes
drawing the line, sometimes crossing it, sometimes
erasing or moving it, but always there, the god of the
threshold in all its forms."
- Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World
--> 02: The Myth of Hermes
"If my father will not give me honors, then I will steal
them."
- Hermes
In "Trickster Makes This World," Lewis Hyde retells the story of Hermes, who
is the son of Zeus, king of the gods, and a cave nymph by means of an extra-
marital affair. His questionable birth makes it uncertain if he will become
recognized as a god as well. He was born with the stain of illegitimacy but
born undeniably exceptional, pointing to his divine ancestry, even if it
could not be explicitly stated aloud. He was also born with a certain
impulsiveness, so he decides as a day-old baby to steal fifty head of cattle
from his half-brother Apollo, claiming that he was hungry for something
more substantial than the milk he was given. In doing so, Hermes displays
his craftiness by walking the stolen cattle backward and by wearing special
sandals he crafted himself to obscure his footprints. When he got back,
he slaughtered and cooked two of the cattle but did not eat the meat.
Instead, he hid it away and climbed back into his crib.
When Hermes' mother, Maia, discovers what he has done, she questions him by
asking how he could be so shameless to do such a thing. Hermes first denies
the accusations by saying, "I am just a little baby. How could I possibly
have stolen these cattle?" Maia, who sees through her child's attempt at
deception, questions Hermes again, who laments in frustration, "Why must we
live in this cave when the other gods live on Olympus enjoying the fruits of
sacrifices? If my father will not give me honors, then I will steal them."
Apollo eventually notices that some cattle from his herd are gone and also
somehow already knows that it was the newly-born Hermes that took them.
Apollo tracks down and questions Hermes, who once again responds with,
"I am just a little baby. How could I possibly have stolen your cattle?"