The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series by David Lagercrantz Read Free Book Online Page A

attack.
    Blomkvist had discussed the extraordinary events with Salander. She had been looking after her assets in Gibraltar at the time. It was on April 9 that year, just before she was due to go to prison, and she seemed strangely unconcerned. Blomkvist thought maybe she wanted to enjoy her last moments of freedom and not bother with the news, even if hacking was involved. But she might have been expected to show some interest and just possibly – he did not rule this out – she knew something about it.
    He had been in the editorial offices on Götgatan that day when his colleague Sofie Melker told him that the banks were having problems with their websites. Blomkvist didn’t give it a second thought. The stock exchange was not responding to the news either. But then people began to notice that the domestic trading volume was low. Soon after that it dried up altogether, and thousands of customers discovered they could no longer access their holdings online. There were simply no assets in the securities accounts. A whole series of press releases went out:
    We are experiencing technical difficulties and we are working to correct them. The situation is under control and will be resolved soon.
    And yet the concerns grew. The krona exchange rate dropped, and suddenly there came a tsunami of rumours that the damage was so extensive it would not be possible to reconstruct the securities accounts in full: significant blocks of assets had simply gone up in smoke. No matter that the various authorities dismissed this as nonsense, the financial markets crashed. All trading stopped and there was much high-pitched shouting into telephones and crashing of mail servers. A bomb threat was made against the Swedish National Bank. Windows were smashed. Among other incidents, the financier Carl af Trolle kicked a bronze sculpture so hard that he broke eight bones in his right foot.
    And just as the situation seemed about to get out of control, it was over. The assets reappeared in everyone’s accounts and the head of the central bank, Lena Duncker herself, announced that there had never been anything to worry about. That may have been correct. But the most interesting aspect of the scare was not I.T. security itself, it was the illusion and the panic.
    What had triggered it?
    It became clear that the central register of Swedish securities, called Värdepapperscentralen before it was sold to the Belgian company Finance Security (a sign of the times), had been the target of a “denial of service” attack, which revealed how vulnerable the financial system was. But that was not the whole picture. There was also the merry-go-round of imputations, warnings and plain lies which flooded social media, and which caused Blomkvist to exclaim that day:
    “Is some bastard trying to make the market crash?”
    He did get support for his theory during the days and weeks that followed. But like everyone else, he was unable to get to the root of the events. No suspects were ever identified, so after a while he let it go. The whole country let it go. The stock market went up once more. The economy blossomed. The markets became bullish again and Blomkvist turned to more pressing topics – the refugee catastrophe, the terrorist attacks, the rise of right-wing populism and fascism across Europe and the U.S. But now …
    He remembered the dark look on Salander’s face in the visitors’ room and thought about the threats against her, about her sister Camilla and her circle of hackers and bandits. So he started searching again and came across an essay Leo Mannheimer had written for
Fokus
magazine. Blomkvist was not impressed. Mannheimer had no new information. But parts of the article gave a good description of the psychological aspects of the incident. Blomkvist noted that Mannheimer would soon be giving a series of talks on the subject, under the heading “The Market’s Hidden Worry”. He was due to deliver a speech on the topic the following day, Sunday,