Hackers stuff ballot box for Time Magazine's top 100 poll Time Magazine's poll of the 100 most influential people has been hacked by a motley band of online troublemakers who have managed to manipulate the top 21 names so their first letters spell "marblecake, also the game." According to an inside account detailed by blogger Paul Lamere, members of the 4chan website exploited …
"We took many preventative measures to maintain the integrity of the Time 100 poll on Time.com, and moot has a passionate community of users who worked to influence the poll,"
My arse. You left the poll wide-open for the most dumb-arse of hackers/script kiddies to figure out. There was no luck involved in this, just pure 100% cunning. Your systems were rubbish, your vote-vetting was rubbish, and the 4chan crew showed you up for the noobs that you are. Congratulations, lepers.
I am unaware of what the 4Chan site actually is. I've deliberatly avoided it because I've heard consistent statements that the site is full of teenage douchebags. Now after this stunt, and surpisingly by some of the comments here, I believe I've done the right thing up until now. And I believe I'll continue to do so.
@ AC : Sunday 19th April 2009 13:40 GMT
You heard right. It only takes one /b/tard with a brain to produce a nice script, then you just need a herd of braying morons to run it on a bunch of machines. Where could you find such a herd? Hmmm.
With the tit-for-tat DoS attacks between AnT and 4Chan and the increasing cancer of newfag invasions, it's time 4chan got put to bed in the archives.
...about the denizens of /b/ being about the most powerful force on the internet these days?
Well good luck to them. This isn't one of their better stunt, but I like it enough.
To those thinking about dipping their toes into 4chan culture and finding out what it's all about, well, I would be careful. I felt like my mind had been violated the first time. The racism, gore, shock pictures, dumbass copypasta and the extreme level of offensive idiocy actually knocked me back for a while.
But it doesn't hurt so bad after the first time.
After a while you realise that there's a tremendous amount of energy there, with a big portion of disaffection. Keep watching, interesting things sometimes bubble up from that vat of pestilent puke.
Again shows that Internet polls are not worth the electrons they are printed on, at least not when they raise any kind of hacker interest. Same for txt message polls and competitions: I once listened to a couple of bright young programmers describe how they rigged a local Coca Cola "collect bottles and text the code" campaign to get a free concert trip abroad. Ordinary consumers never had a change...
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