Hacker Boasts Entry into Bloombury Employee's Computer, Allegedly Reveals Harry Potter Ending

Reuters recently reported that a hacker calling himself "Gabriel", has gotten hold of a digital copy of the seventh book of J.K Rowling's Harry Potter, by hacking a computer of the book's London publisher, Bloomsbury.

The seventh book in the Harry Potter series marks the end of Harry Potter's adventures and is entitled, "Harry Potter and the deathly hallows". The book is scheduled to be released on July 21^st. According to Chiff.com, J.K. Rowling in an interview on Britain's Channel 4, said that two characters had been killed off in the last book and a month before the scheduled release date, several rumors have already been circulating regarding the identities of the characters that would be killed.

According to Reuters, the hacker Gabriel has posted the information at InSecure.Org and revealed the two characters that will be killed. According to Gabriel's post at Insecure.org, they did the spoiler to make reading the upcoming book useless and boring. As to how they did it, the hacker claims, "The attack strategy was the easiest one.

The usual milw0rm downloaded exploit delivered by email/click-on-the-link/open-browser/click-on-this-animated-icon/back-connect to some employee of Bloomsbury Publishing, the company that's behind the Harry crap. It's amazing to see how much people inside the company have copies and drafts of this book."

And as justification, the hacker said, "We did it by following the precious words of the great Pope Benedict XVI when he still was Cardinal Josepth Ratzinger.
He explained why Harry Potter bring the youngs of our earth to Neo Paganism faith."

As per Reuters' publication, Bloomsbury spokesman has declined to comment on the hacker's claims however, a spokesman for Scholastic Corp., the US distributor warned readers to be skeptical about anything on the web that claims to have information on the book's plot.

In previous years, there were already other incidents that tried to spoil the plot of upcoming Harry Potter books. According to inthenews.co.uk, in 2003, a truck driver pleaded guilty of stealing pages of the fifth Harry Potter book and trying to sell them to a tabloid newspaper, and Reuters reports that in 2005, a stolen copy of the sixth Harry Potter surfaced in England a month before its official release.

Barnes and Noble has already 500,000 pre-orders of the book while Scholastic plans to release 12 million copies of the book. The first four books of the Harry Potter series have already been made into a movie and the fifth installment is going to be released in July 2007.

For those who are curious to see what the hacker posted, visit this site.

SOURCE:

Jim Finkle, Hacker claims Harry Potter's alleged ending on Web. Reuters. URL: (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070620/wr_nm/harrypotter_hacker_dc;_ylt=AlwE3hK_0jZWUpzb6J5WOs0jtBAF)

Peter Sciretta, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Ending Leaked/Hacked? Slashfilm.com. URL: (http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/06/20/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-ending-leakedhacked/)