For two or three years, computer hackers, thanks to the technique of "phishing" - fake emails furiously resembling real ones - have managed to seize the manuscripts of famous authors, before their publication.
The motivations like the identity of these pirates remain mysterious.
The story is worthy of a Sherlock Holmes.
The
New York Times
reports that around the world, but particularly in the United States, hackers are attempting to steal the manuscripts of unpublished novels by great writers.
The merry-go-round has been going on for two or three years and authors such as Margaret Atwood or Ian McEwan, for example, have already paid the price.
Concretely, the writer receives an email from his agent or his editor who asks him to send him the latest version of the next novel.
No reason to be suspicious.
The writer therefore sends his manuscript.
But it's a pirate who gets it.
No ransom demand, no blackmail
This is the method of "phishing", of phishing.
The hacker sends an email with an address almost identical to the publisher's email.
Simply, an n is missing, or a t is replaced by an f… And since no one, neither writers nor others, examines e-mail addresses, in the United States, but also in Italy, Sweden or Israel , dozens of authors have had their text stolen.
The main question remains: what is the point?
Because unpublished novels are obviously unsaleable.
And besides, they never resurface in the arcana of the web.
And no ransom demand came in, no blackmail either.
Nothing.
The hypothesis, which is worth what it is worth, is that these manuscripts would be stolen by literary scouts, those publishing scouts paid to identify writers or genres that are on the rise.
For now, the mystery remains unsolved.
But in any case, that would make a good novel.