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frogs-in3-hills · 2 years ago

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Day 5 of the @domaystic prompt challenge: "Learning something new"

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) | Gen | SFW | 2,254

Relationship: Donatello & Leonardo & Michelangelo & Raphael

POV Donatello

Summary: In which Donny accidentally hacks into his own network, and is consequently so horrified that he proceeds to invent WPA2. (aka author has rudimentary knowledge of 90s to early 2000s wi-fi protocol and is determined to make it everyone else's problem)

When Don was little, things were simpler.

The world around him was, in truth, just as complex as it always had been, of course, and ever would be. But those things didn’t seem to matter as much, because he had his father and his brothers, the sewers in which they lived, and a few static truths that guided him. Be compassionate towards all living things. Conduct himself with fairness. No hogging the GameDude.

He was so innocent. That made everything a lot easier.

But eventually he learned that his family was different, in the same way all outcast children do. He already knew a little about how human kids lived from the video games and books Dad had scrounged up for himself and his brothers, but it had kind of seemed like some kind of fantasy world, like with dragons and superheroes and stuff.

But it wasn’t, of course. That life was real, and Don and his brothers would never have it.

He learned that human kids didn’t live scrapyard to scrapyard, hiding away deep within the sewers, dependent on their limited network of stores with broken security cameras and dumpsters that were less likely to be filled with moldy leftovers---they lived in houses, and they got up in the morning every day when the sun rose, and they walked to school in their squeaking tennis shoes, and they learned. Of course, there were other human families besides their own that would have been pushed over the edge by just one unexpected problem, too, but all Don knew at the time was the idyllic notion of picket fences and playing under the afternoon sky that he’d seen in human media.

Master Splinter had assured him it didn’t matter and that Don would forge his own path, but he already knew that. He didn’t doubt whether he was able to do it. Obviously he would. He’d just become… acutely aware of the unfairness of it all.

He could only learn through reverse-engineering the leftover scraps that were no longer useful to humans. At first, he’d just enjoyed playing around with those old broken motherboards, poking and prodding at the details with a screwdriver that was half-crusted in black rust, but then one day he must have shifted some specific piece in some particular way that made the thing sputter to life.

Don doesn’t even remember what it was, really, just knows that all of this obviously must have started somewhere. But it had felt so intrinsic to him, it didn’t seem like a terribly significant realization. It just kind of happened, like it had been a part of him the whole time.

Now he was older, and it was because of him that his brothers had a home now, too. Not the same as human kids, not at all---but better. Fairer, at least a little.

He’d repaired the TV that they all liked to watch cartoons on, he’d set up a more efficient heating system to keep them from getting too cold in the winter, and he’d somehow managed to piecemeal some software from his limited collection of stained textbooks that could get a half-shattered router connected to the web, without needing dial-up.

Looking back on it, that was all obviously impressive, but it had been before The Water Pump Moment---or, at least, that’s what Mikey liked to call it.

It was two things:

First of all, it was the day that Don realized he wasn’t the only one reverse-engineering things. Sure, you could argue that science itself started because people like Aristotle and Galileo were reverse-engineering the world around them (and that was a reason that Don had so much reverence for them in particular), but that wasn’t The Moment.

To put it very simply, just as he’d done amidst guilty tears while explaining it all to Master Splinter: if Donny could hack into networks and break into hardware, then somebody else could do the same to them.

Don liked to think his childhood had been a positive one, but there was no denying that it had been a childhood laced with a constant undercurrent of fear. Dad had done his best to make sure they didn’t have to worry about being caught, about what they were going to eat tomorrow, or about what they would do if one of them got really sick; it always there, though, leaking through in slow drips, or ocassionally in cleaving waves when disaster struck.

But Don hadn’t fully comprehended it until he realized that he’d been endangering them for years, connecting them to the outside world with absolutely no defense. He’d been so insatiably excited to scratch that ever-present itch in his brain with more knowledge, more technology, more and more until he was bursting at the seams with it, spilling over the top, a glass overflowing, that he hadn’t even stopped to consider that it could be dangerous. And then he discovered that it was.

Looking back on it, Don might have viewed this realization as simply a formative moment, or even, potentially, a traumatic incident, but that still wouldn’t have been enough for it to be The Water Pump Moment. Which, of course, leads to the second thing:

It was the first time Don had ever created something that had never been seen before in the entire world, ever---and not out of creativity, but out of necessity.

In other words? Invention.

Not “poorly-drawn sketchbook pages filled with sci-fi weapons and giant cogs that would somehow make an airplane fly” inventions, or “wouldn’t it be cool if mobile phones could take pictures?” inventions, but actual, for real inventions, like “identify the problem, design a solution, write the code, and debug” inventions.

This came about two days after Donny had a pretty spectacular freak-out in which he disconnected every single appliance in their home and frantically hacked into them with terrifying ease. Eventually, he realized that this only served to make him spiral further while his poor, confused family watched on in baffled concern. From there, it was like he’d fallen into a sudden, serene trance, fueled by a consuming resolve to fix it.

Basically, while fiddling with their cool new network system, Don had discovered a security issue---one that could potentially put their family in danger if somebody topside so much as walked over their section of the sewer while looking for a connection, or even decided to attack a random home on a whim. Because all of the messages on the network were encrypted with a static key, it was easily cracked. It was just a matter of eavesdropping on transmissions, and you could decrypt every single message yourself. That meant somebody could easily find everything they looked at on the web, every TV channel they accessed, and, most worrying, every time one of them sent a distress signal on the little belt clips that Master Splinter had insisted Don recreate after watching a few episodes of Star Trek together.

Honestly, Don had no clue who would come up with something like that. Obviously you’re not supposed to send an RSVP whenever you plan to sneak around somewhere. Leo would be appalled to learn that something so un-ninja even existed in their home.

The obvious solution was to turn that static key into a dynamic one, though it also wouldn’t hurt to extend the character limit, even open it up to potentially include all ASCII values. Unfortunately, it wasn’t immediately clear how their own network was supposed to decode anything the actual key was constantly being randomized and rewritten. But if he gave each individual device a unique encryption key, then maybe…

Suffice to say, Don eventually figured it out. Nothing to worry about.

He later learned that he’d discovered most of those vulnerabilities before anyone else had, meaning there hadn’t been any danger in the first place.

“Oh…” Leo says. “Really, Don? But I remember how stressed you were about it.”

Raph looks up from his corner of the couch, nestled in with a blanket and book. “Yeah, I kinda remember that, too.”

“I dunno,” Mikey says, not looking away from his Half-Life match. “Isn’t that kinda dope? You figured it out before everyone else, bro, and you were, like, five.”

“Closer to nine, I think,” Don corrects.

Raph scoffs. “Still impressive as shell.”

“Regardless,” Don says, stretching out the world as he leans down to inspect the router, “I need to take this thing for a few minutes to make sure it can handle everything on the new security standard.”

Mikey makes a noise that activates every “little brother is annoying” synapse in Don’s brain, already predicting how this will affect his life in particular for the next few hours.

“Yes, that means you can’t go on the web until I’m done.”

“I’m in the middle of a match, dude!”

Look, as a fellow gamer, Don knows the feeling. Unfortunately for Mikey, Don also knows the feeling you get the day after you’ve been inconveniently interrupted during an online game: namely, nothing, because you’ve generally forgotten all about it by then.

“Yeaahh, he’s in the middle of a match, Don,” Raph needles from across the room, then shifts into a slightly more sincere tone. “Can’t ya wait a couple minutes for him to wrap it up? Take a sec, have a glass of water or something. Then Mikey can stop melting his brains, you can work on your protocol stuff, and everyone’s happy.”

“Whoa Raph, did I, like, do you a favor without realizing or something?”

“Yeah, whatever, Mikey, I’m just saying what I’m thinkin’.”

It’s worth considering that Raph wouldn’t bother siding with Mikey unless Don was being particularly stubborn without realizing it, but he really doesn’t think he’s being unreasonable here. Now that WPA2 is becoming a public thing, every extra second spent on “just one more” Half-Life deathmatch is an opportunity for someone to weasel their way into their network, which would pose a significantly bigger problem to them now than it would have a few years ago.

Don considers explaining this to his brothers, but figures it would be pointless. They already trust him to do his thing regardless of whether they know what his thing is, exactly, and the same goes for when they believe it’s not so urgent. Giving more specifics will only make them double down on their---and he says this lovingly---very misinformed view of the bigger picture.

“Unfortunately, I’d really like to get this over with sooner rather than later. I’ve been getting ready to do this for days, and I warned everyone that this would be happening.”

“But you didn’t say when!” Mikey cries, abandoning his game to take Don by the shoulders. “I thought maybe you meant, like, in a few weeks!”

“Well, since you’ve already left the chair, you’ve basically forfeited the game,” Don smiles apologetically before flicking the power button on the router. “Sorry, Mikey.”

Mikey sinks to the floor with a prolonged “Nooooooo!” as Don picks up the router and holds it up to his chest.

“Ruthless,” Leo comments.

Don laughs a little. “Nah, just being cautious. See you guys later.”

The last thing he hears before heading off to the lab is a “he’s not coming out for the next two days, is he?” from Raph and an already-mostly-recovered Mikey asking if anyone wants to play Tony Hawk instead. Well, it’s an offline game, so that’s fine with Don.

He thinks he may have caused his brothers to assume that he needed to upgrade to this new, public standard, but that’s not really true. The protocol Donny made when he was nine had already been on its way to being more advanced than the current iteration, and by now he’d certainly surpassed it with a series of upgrades he’d made over the years. As long as he could stay ahead of the game, they would be safe.

That’s why he never felt upset upon finding out that all his previous anguish hadn’t been necessary, since he was the only one who knew about those vulnerabilities anyway. Because someone would have to discover them, and all the subsequent ones in the future, and if that person wasn’t Donny, that meant it could be one of their enemies instead. So he has to stay on top of it. Always.

He’s sure that plenty of people are doing the same thing he’s about to do, trying to pry into the new system in search of something to exploit. They wouldn’t have any luck, since Don didn’t find anything too obvious, but the fact is this: those people are still going to come away with that experience full of ideas, half-baked theories, and potential threats building that could be used against Don’s family if he didn’t update this thing, like, now.

He stretches his arms above his head, interlocking his fingers and easing some of the ever-present strain on his wrists. He would have to think like someone who wanted to crack a dynamic key, who knew the ins and outs of WPA2, now, because that’s what his enemies could do.

Unlike it had been years ago, what he’s about to do to their network is no accident. He isn’t fiddling around with parts that he knows the function but doesn’t fully understand.

He understands it all very intimately, now.

Time to step into the deep end of the pool and push his own system to its limits.

“Alright,” he says to himself, “let’s get hacking!”

#hmm i kind of don't like this one.. brain empty today can't write [proceeds to write 2k words]#i'm so happy with tomorrow's though i can't wait to post it!#wwegfdjfdzjh i think i'll rewrite this at some point its kind of ooc #domaystic2023 #tmnt 2003 #hamato donatello #tmnt fanfiction #frogs.fic

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