I feel like I’m living in a William Gibson novel.
Vast global corporations with deep pockets and global digital systems attacked by amorphous self-organizing digital conglomerations. Virtual worlds virtually attacked, with real-life consequences.
I’m talking, of course, about hacker/cracker group ANONYMOUS and their maybe/maybe not their takedown of Sony’s Playstation Network.
Someone took down the service. Someone (maybe a different set of someones) stole perhaps 100 million credit cards (!!!). Possibly, the data thieves took advantage of a relatively minor distraction caused by Anonymous. Possibly, a group as porous and well, anonymous as Anonymous includes some less-than-savoury characters who use their mad skillz and sometimes doff their white hats for chapeaux noirs.
Who knows? Who can find out? Who would even tell?
We’re stuck in cyberspace – a world William Gibson invented – and it’s cloudy in here, with no chance of meatballs. Traceable footprints and fingerprints are limited and digital and deletable and spoofable in this world. Only experts can trace them, and only if they are granted access to relevant services and servers by multiple major corporations and governments, all with competing agendas. And, just like their meatspace analogues, they disappear over time.
People are employed in digital industries, making virtual goods that have actual value. We’ve known this for years. This is just a corollary … stealing insubstantial data that can be transubstantiated into very real physical and substantial wealth.
Welcome to the future. It’s like the past but different.