By Erin Monda, TMCnet Contributor
In Stieg Larsson’s popular “Girl With a Dragon Tattoo” series, the main character, Lisbeth Salander, belongs to an elite underground hacker organization with nearly limitless capabilities. The Republic can rob bank accounts, mess with governmental systems and provide all kinds of network security issues.
“The Hacker Republic comprised a very exclusive club of the best of the best, an elite force that any defense organization in the world would have paid enormous sums to use for cyber-military purpose, if the citizens could be persuaded to feel any kind of loyalty to any state. Which was not very likely.”
Likely or not, Larsson goes on to clearly summarize the power that hackers hold. “If fifty of the world's foremost hackers decided to launch a coordinated attack against an entire country, the country might survive, but not without having serious problems. The costs would certainly run into the billions…”
While Larsson’s books have placed the post mortem author on The New York Times’ bestseller’s list, his ideas are hardly as far-fetched as Dan Brown’s.
The fact of the matter is that organized hacker groups do exist – and they come together on the Internet. When I was a kid in the 90s, and an avid gamer, the Warez scene was always in my peripheral vision (the “scene,” at its core, is a network of hackers on a mission to share software and viruses among like minds.)
These days, the www.warez.com website doesn’t link back to its forums or its chatrooms openly – for good reason. But it does feature basic pirated content – a crime which is enough to attract the attention of the authorities.
And the exposure has hurt. A few weeks ago, a huge police operation across Europe was coordinated against the Warez scene, the details of which are honestly hard to come by. According to a few independent news sites, the earlier reports state that the majority of the crack downs occurred in Sweden (the setting of the Larsson books).
Intended or no, Larsson has brought enlightenment to the public about the very real dangers facing network security – and he has also dragged an entire underground community into the light.
While Larsson wrote of the power of such organized hacking groups, he hardly painted them as villains. In fact, he emphasized the personal responsibility associated with their power -- particularly when it comes to correcting government corruption.
