REAL HACKER FACT CHECKS 'THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS NEST'

Vanity Fair has an interview with a reformed hacker Kevin Poulsen, specifically about the hacking Lisbeth Salander does in the blockbuster best selling books by Stieg Larsson The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. 


Poulsen, a former "black hat" hacker who's now the editor of Wired.com's Threat Level, says that as far as fictionalized hacking goes, Lisbeth Salander's cyber conquests are pretty realistic, even if the way she goes about doing them are a bit fuzzy:

Michael Hogan: Is there anything that Lisbeth Salander did that struck you as implausible?
Kevin Poulsen: The interesting thing is, everything that she does is completely plausible-it's the way she does it that is for the most part completely nonsensical as a technical matter.
MH: Can you explain?
KP: Well, she uses a device given to her by her other hacker buddy-she puts it over the co-ax cable of the corrupt financier, Hans-Erik Wennerström. The entire description of how that works and how she uses it to get control of his computer is just a fabrication. She describes taking his computer and basically setting it up so that when this guy thinks he's logged in using his computer, he's actually using her server-and she's able to monitor everything.
MH: Right.
KP: That isn't how it would be done. But you certainly are seeing these days attacking somebody's P.C. instead of attacking their server, and logging their key strokes and all of that. This is exactly what the hackers are doing right now. That's what they are doing in financial crimes in particular. When you get down to the technical details, it's all very fictional. But the actual capabilities are all completely real.

Interesting...I'm now going to run my anti-virus, scanners and any other security software I can find! [Gizmodo] [Vanity Fair]