Beyond the walled gardens and streaming subscriptions of our suburban Internet lies a treacherous sea of routers. A place where pirates, spies, and thieves compete for the opportunity to access the secrets passing by. All of our most sensitive and private information passes through this place each day with only a thin layer of protection.
This veil of secrecy comes from the substitutions and transpositions that scramble our secrets during the rounds of encryption. Public keys get shared and private keys are kept safe. Certificates and key exchanges flutter quickly. Salted hashes slow the brutes from forcing the gates open.
As technologies evolve, both attackers and defenders find new opportunities for success. The arms race continues. Quantum computers may already be revealing the factors that secure our ciphertext. While AI agents are identifying new attacks, GPT powered bots are mastering the art of social engineering.
This is the Ugly Internet.