Known as ChaO, the author is one of the most controversial figures in Turkey's history of cybercrime. Born in the 1970s, he honed his skills in computer programming and system security from a young age.He first came to international prominence as the administrator of the infamous cyber-underground forum, DarkMarket, a role that saw him featured in bestselling books like Kevin Poulsen's Kingpin and Misha Glenny's DarkMarket. Referred to as the ""untouchable Turkish administrator"" by WIRED and the BBC, ChaO became the primary target of a two-year FBI operation.The author, who has spent a total of 23 years in 23 different high-security prisons in Turkey, details his experiences and the unfiltered truth of the cyber world in his debut book, Chao: Code, Conspiracy, and Penance. The book's initial draft was written while incarcerated and was subsequently censored by court order.After regaining his freedom in 2025, ChaO resides in Istanbul.
""States leave false logs behind; we clean them up. ChaO opened the dirtiest system logs of that era and saved them to a new file named 'truth.' This isn't a hack; it's a system restore.""The Janitor ""For years, we wrote the heroic tale the FBI fed us. It turns out we were only watching the trailer. This book is where the fiction ends and the truth begins.""DeepThroat_TR ""In our world, the rule is simple: you don't talk. Even as his empire crumbled, ChaO never broke that rule. He chose honor, not money or power. We all went to prison, but only he walked in with his head held high.""LastSamurai_CP ""I've spent years reading about this man, listening to the conspiracy theories. Something was always missing. This book is like the final, lost piece of the puzzle that makes everything make sense.""The Truth Hunter ""We always knew him as a 'hacker.' But these lines show he was a thinker. He fought not with code, but with ideas.""CyberPhilosopher ""We chased that ghost for years. We wrote 'Operation successful' in the reports, but deep down, we knew something was missing. This book is the confession of that missing piece.""Agent_Regret ""On the first page, there was curiosity. On the last, anger. But the true feeling emerged somewhere in the middle: respect. A deep, unshakable respect.""The Bookworm ""Even in the darkest markets of the cyber world, his name was spoken only in whispers. Now I understand it wasn't a whisper; it was a suppressed scream.""DarkMarket_Veteran