Trafika Europe 14 - Italian Piazza

Piero Schiavo Campo

“It ’s a rather complex hack which would need some fiddling around, but it can be done.” “How does it work?” I asked. “You know the Aladdin story? At a certain point the evil wizard gets his lamp back, and the first thing he does is move Aladdin’s palace – lock, stock and barrel, vizier ’s daughter and all – to the desert. As far as we’re concerned, an Aladdin’s lamp is a hack by which the entire content of a site, including incoming and outgoing links, is transferred to another address known exclusively to the hacker. Only an empty space remains in place of the original. In this case, if you don’t want to alarm your Chinese friend, a copy would work better than a transfer.” “Why do you say it ’s difficult? It seems pretty straightforward.” Silver ’s avatar smiled. “A site leaves thousands of traces,” he answered. “Just think of all the semantic engines tracing it. If you really want to copy everything, it ’s not at all simple. But it can be done.” “And what do I do with the copy? Without the original address I’ll never be able to connect it to Countess Selmo Rossi, or to anyone else.” “If the site disappears, all we need to do is restore it exactly as it was from our copy.”

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