In June 2005, a balding,
slightly overweight, perpetually T-shirt-clad 26-year-old computer consultant
named Dan Kaminsky decided to get in shape. He began by scanning the Internet
for workout tips and read that five minutes of sprinting was the equivalent of
a half-hour jog. This seemed like a great shortcut—an elegant exercise hack—so
he bought some running shoes at the nearest Niketown. That same afternoon, he laced up his new kicks and burst out the front door of his Seattle apartment building for his
first five-minute workout. He took a few strides, slipped on a concrete ramp and crashed to the sidewalk,
shattering his left elbow.
He spent the next few weeks
stuck at home in a Percocet-tinged haze. Before the injury, he'd spent
his days testing the inner workings of software programs. Tech companies
hired him to root out security holes before hackers could find them. Kaminsky did it well. He had a
knack for breaking things—bones and software alike.
But now, laid up in bed, he
couldn't think clearly. His mind drifted. Running hadn't worked out so well. Should he
buy a stationary bike? Maybe one of those recumbent jobs would be best. He
thought about partying in Las Vegas … mmm, martinis … and recalled a trick he'd
figured out for getting free Wi-Fi at Starbucks.
As his arm healed, the details
of that Starbucks hack kept nagging at him. He remembered that he had gotten
into Starbucks' locked network using the domain name system, or DNS. When
someone types google .com into a browser, DNS has a list of exactly where
Google's servers are and directs the traffic to them. It's like directory
assistance for the Internet. At Starbucks, the port for the low-bandwidth DNS
connection—port 53—was left open to route customers to the Pay for
Starbucks Wi-Fi Web
page.
So, rather than pay, Kaminsky
used port 53 to access the open DNS connection and get online. It was free but super-slow, and his
friends mocked him mercilessly. To Kaminsky
that was an irresistible challenge. After weeks of studying the minutiae of DNS
and refining his hack, he was finally able to stream a 12-second animated video
of Darth Vader dancing a jig with Michael Flatley. (The clip paired the Lord of
the Sith with the Lord of the Dance.)
That was more than a year ago,
but it still made him smile. DNS was the unglamorous underbelly
of the Internet, but it had amazing powers. Kaminsky felt drawn to the obscure,
often-ignored protocol all over again.
Maybe the painkillers loosened
something in his mind, because as Kaminsky began to think more deeply about DNS
he became convinced that something wasn't right. He couldn't quite figure it out,
but the feeling stuck with him even after he stopped taking the pain pills. He returned to work full time and bought a recumbent
stationary bike. He got hired to test the security of Windows Vista before it
was released, repeatedly punching holes in it for Microsoft. Still, in the back
of his mind, he was sure that the entire DNS system was vulnerable to attack.
1.
he laced up his
new kicks and burst
S V O
2.
He took a
few strides
S
V O
3.
He spent stuck the next few weeks
S V
O Adv
4.
Tech companies hired him
S V
O
5.
He had a knack
S V
O
6.
he couldn't think clearly
S V Adj
7.
DNS has a list of exactly
S V
O Adj
8.
Kaminsky used port 53
S V O
9.
DNS was the unglamorous
S V C
10. his friends mocked him
mercilessly
S V O
Adj
Reference:
https://www.wired.com/2008/11/ff-kaminsky/?currentPage=all
