Harish's World - neither here nor there...

Exactly one month to go, and we will have the final installment of the Harry Potter series in our midst. There is no point in hiding that I thoroughly enjoyed the series so far, and am eagerly waiting for Deathly Hallows. But this post is not about the book or the series (or the movie for that matter), but a certain news I read today, that rather amused me.

Some hacker has claimed that he has supposedly "hacked" into a Bloomsbury's PC using a trojan, and managed to get hold of the electronic version of the final book. And to prove it he has posted the main plot of the story online. More interestingly, Bloomsbury has refused to comment on it (as in they neither deny nor accept that this is true). Such reactions lead of the possibility of this being true, as if it were false, then an outright denial would have happened with very high probability. (I was really tempted to read the hacker's post, but somehow managed to keep away from clicking on the link).

Let us, for the sake of an argument assume that this incident did occur. What amused me was that, after all the security behind publishing the books, from J. K. Rowling carrying the manuscript with her where ever she went, to the secrecy of the press where the books were printed and the locations of the warehouses where the books are being stored, Bloomsbury was duped by a mere trojan!! Was it sheer luck that the trojan was planted on that one PC that had the script, or did all of the Bloomsbury's PCs that are connected to the Internet have a copy of the text? With such security in place, I would have surely thought that the electronic version of the book would surely been on a PC not connected to the Internet (or at least on a PC using another OS than the one I think they used).

This is all under the assumption that Bloomsbury was indeed hacked. But the possibility seems to be more certain if they don't deny it. Lets just hope that they deny it. If they do, then I think I'll actually read the "hacker's prediction", but if they don't, I hope I manage to stay away from the spoiler until I have read the book.