King of Cybersecurity
DOOM CLOCK 23:58

Painted, Not Photocopied Cybersecurity Memes From the Kingdom

Phishing, passwords, ransomware, AI agents and the naming of enemies. Objections by the Fool. Illumination by the Page. Neither of them was asked.

The Fool supplies the objection and the Page supplies the gold leaf. They began without permission, which is how the court learns of most things, and have not been stopped because nobody can establish whose task stopping them was.

Each comes in a larger copy, square and near enough three hundred lines to the inch at the size of a postcard, which is enough for a slide, a newsletter or a small print for a wall that has earned one.

Take them. Pin one to a noticeboard where the person who opened a temporary rule in 2019 will have to walk past it. Unaltered, unsold, and otherwise unconditional.

Firewall meme: a temporary rule still open since 2019, over an illustrated castle of gates, walls and servers

Opened for one afternoon by somebody in a hurry who has since left the company. The ticket is closed. The rule is not.

Password meme: a password that meets the policy and is Summer2026, judged by a horse at a medieval tribunal

It has a capital, a number and a punctuation mark, exactly where the policy said to put them. So does everybody else's.

AI security meme: an agent given full access for one afternoon and still there on day forty, as an armoured golem

Access granted for a trial is rarely taken back, because nobody wishes to be the one who slowed the machine down.

Phishing meme: an urgent email from your boss asking for gift cards, on trial as a hooded envelope

Urgency and authority both stop people checking, which is why the request that cannot possibly wait is the one that can.

Threat actor meme: one attacker with three names, as three heralds arguing over shields of red boars

Every firm names what it finds, none can overrule another, and the intruder is the only party present who is not confused.

Backup meme: six years of nightly backups nobody ever restored, as a feast that never arrives

Every night, faithfully, for six years. The restore was tested once, in principle, at a meeting.

The longer versions

All 14 chronicles →

Each of these happened at greater length, with witnesses, and was written down. There are 14 such records. The Royal Armoury issues some of it as posters, for noticeboards belonging to people who have stopped expecting better.

The terms of issue

Take them and use them: at work, in a classroom, in a newsletter, on any noticeboard that will have them. Do not alter them and do not sell them. The credit is already printed on the thing, so there is nothing for you to add.

That is the whole treaty. The crown's lawyers are disappointed by its brevity and have been informed that the matter is closed.

Requests, questions and corrections reach the court at [email protected].

More will follow. The court fails at new things reliably and has never once been short of material. The Fool has reserved judgement on whether any of it is satire, at length, in writing, unprompted. He considers the words the important half. The Page has not been asked.