I’ve seen a few examples where recommenders, polls and top-ten lists have been manipulated. Generally a central coordinator sends a message to the hoard that descend on the to-be-hacked site. Ron Paul’s sheeple, or pharyngula’s followers are prime examples of the type of group that can turn a poll upside down in a matter of minutes.
It has always seemed to me that such coordinating manipulation was a blunt instrument. The commanded horde could push a specific item to the top of a poll faster than a Kansas school board could lose Darwin’s notebook, but the horde lacked any subtlety or finesse. Sure you could promote or demote an individual or issue, but fine tuned manipulation would just be too difficult. Well, I’ve been proved wrong. Take a look at this Time Poll.
Not only has the poll been swamped to promote Moot (the pseudonym of the creator of 4chan, an image board and the birthplace for many internet memes) as the most influential of people, the poll crashers have manipulated the order of all the other nominees so that the first letter of each line spells out ‘marble cake, also the game’ (marble cake is not really a kind of cake btw). This is pretty phenomenal, precision hacking. Precision hacking of an extremely high profile poll run by a top notch media company. Now, imagine if the same energy was put into getting that latest Lordi album to the top of the pop 100 charts. I’m sure it could be done (and I’m already wondering if perhaps it has already been done, and we just don’t know it).
Polls, top-N lists, and recommenders based upon the wisdom of the crowds are susceptible to this type of manipulation. Better defenses are going to be needed otherwise we will all be listening to whatever 4chan wants us to listen to. (via reddit)
April 13, 2009 at 9:17 pm |
[...] Not only is moot #1 with 12 times the votes of anyone else, but they spelled out a message with the first letter of each person’s name. [...]
April 13, 2009 at 9:43 pm |
Interesting story.
About the marble cake… I used to eat marble cake when I was young… The BBC has a recipe – top link if you look on Google.
April 13, 2009 at 11:36 pm |
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=marblecake
April 14, 2009 at 6:43 am |
[...] not to discuss? « Not so dead trees Poll hacking April 14, 2009 Impressive: Not only has the poll been swamped to promote Moot (the pseudonym of the creator of 4chan, an [...]
April 14, 2009 at 7:27 am |
[...] as the top slot of Time’s 100 most influential people online poll, the 4chan hackers have aligned the names so the first letters of the poll read “Marble cake, the game also,” and while I don’t know what marble cake is, those [...]
April 14, 2009 at 9:30 am |
By the way, the word you want is ‘horde’ (a large group of people) not ‘hoard’ (a collection of valuable items).
April 28, 2009 at 2:17 am |
We prefer Legion as in rule #4. Of course I am also breaking rules #1 & #2 by telling you this.
July 31, 2009 at 8:25 am
Not true, only applies to raids.
April 14, 2009 at 11:02 am |
“Horde” rather than “hoard” – although such an entity could indeed be quite valuable.
April 14, 2009 at 11:07 am |
thx. will change!
April 14, 2009 at 11:46 am |
Funny indeed. I find it somewhat strange that Time wouldn’t detect manipulations.
April 14, 2009 at 12:54 pm |
I am proud to say that I took part in this.
April 14, 2009 at 12:57 pm |
@doug: I’d love to hear more about how it was done. Please elaborate (if you’d rather email me direct, that’d be cool: paul@echonest.com). Thx
April 14, 2009 at 1:28 pm |
First rule Doug, first rule.
April 14, 2009 at 1:32 pm |
i dont think doug knows rule 1. i doubt hes even heard of rule 34.
April 14, 2009 at 3:06 pm |
[...] Precision Hacking (via Waxy) [...]
April 14, 2009 at 3:22 pm |
I don’t believe I ever broke rules 1 or 2. But thanks for the reminders brothers.
April 14, 2009 at 3:38 pm |
Wasn’t Time the one that also had Attaturk elevated by Turks to Person of the Century or some other title?
I suppose we should be grateful that they didn’t choose “Go F Yourself” for an acronym instead.
April 14, 2009 at 6:44 pm |
Being myself a follower of Pharyngula, I can agree that the polls will go crazy. I mean really crazy weighted in one direction. But this…I cannot imagine the degree of organization that went into this. Truly fantastic.
April 14, 2009 at 7:22 pm |
You should send this to FAILblog for an “pwned” pic.
April 14, 2009 at 8:02 pm |
[...] Precision Hacking I’ve seen a few examples where recommenders, polls and top-ten lists have been manipulated. Generally a central [...] [...]
April 14, 2009 at 8:25 pm |
[...] TIME 100 Influential People poll, and not just to get one name to the top, but to spell out “marble cake and also the game” using the first 21 [...]
April 14, 2009 at 10:51 pm |
[...] Music Machinery 0 Comments No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack [...]
April 14, 2009 at 11:04 pm |
[...] 4Chan manipulated the polls for Time’s 100 Most Influential list. The first letters of each name spell out [...]
April 15, 2009 at 1:04 am |
Marblecake is a type of cake, but there is some back history here, quoted from Usenet:
“Then there’s yet another twist. The first Anonymous video message to Scientology and the first three themes for the protests were cooked up in a collective that has come to be known as Marblecake, because of one of the names for irc channels they used. Opinions on this group vary widely. Some consider them a sinister, secretive cabal bent on controlling Anonymous. Others, including participants, portray them as simply a creative collective who brainstormed and came up with good ideas, which were then adopted at large on their own merits because they were good ideas. Critics of the Marblecake group, on the other hand, accuse MC of astroturfing and using sock puppets to manufacture support for their ideas, “leadarfagging,” and otherwise being bad in a variety of ways.”
April 15, 2009 at 1:35 am |
we are legion.
no, literally.
Doing *anything* by public internet vote these days is a really, really stupid idea.
It doesn’t matter how strong you think your websecurity is because chance are, one of us made that program.
April 15, 2009 at 1:52 am |
If anything, this proves that the poll was honest and the poll organizer did not try to alter the results to their liking.
April 15, 2009 at 4:39 am |
Marbelcake is an irc collective of ‘anons’ who produce media and websites for Project Chanology (the internet based activism/trolling against the Church of Scientology). They received a lot criticism last year for elitism and trying to steer the direction of Chanology. This is a 4chan attempt to troll them.
April 15, 2009 at 5:03 am |
[...] Interessant lille indlæg om præcisionshackning af opinionsmålinger her. Med tanke på den opinionsmålings-syndflod, som nettet har åbnet for, kunne man næste ønske [...]
April 15, 2009 at 5:53 am |
we are legion.
no, literally.
Doing *anything* by public internet vote these days is a really, really stupid idea.
It doesn’t matter how strong you think your websecurity is because chance are, one of us made that program.
*translation* (No, really, I put this shit through BabelFish!)
We are the people who fix your servers, design your web apps, and store your data. We guard your data while you sleep. DO NOT fuck with us.
April 17, 2009 at 10:44 am |
cool story bro
April 18, 2009 at 2:41 am |
[...] Precision Hacking – "Not only has the poll been swamped to promote Moot (the pseudonym of the creator of 4chan, an image board and the birthpace for many internet memes) as the most influential of people, the poll crashers have manipulated the order of all the other nominees so that the first letter of each line spells out ‘marble cake" [...]
April 18, 2009 at 8:00 am |
[...] A beautifully hacked TIME poll. Genius. http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/13/hacking-recommenders/ [...]
April 18, 2009 at 8:32 am |
We r many, we r strong, we r anonymous
April 18, 2009 at 6:10 pm |
[...] Precision Hacking: Just in case you doubted it, crowdsourcing is an amazing device if leveraged correctly. It can be used for very focused tasks too. [...]
April 20, 2009 at 5:43 pm |
[...] Manipulating the Time 100 list. [...]
April 22, 2009 at 7:48 am |
[...] blog entry by Somerville, Mass., programmer Paul Lamere examining how a group of Web enthusiasts were able to precisely manipulate Time magazine’s online poll [...]
April 26, 2009 at 9:23 am |
Awesome shit, thanks for the heads up. Didn’t really recognise the marble cake before I read this article :D
April 27, 2009 at 10:31 am |
[...] [read] [the game] Share with others… Hide Sites $$(‘div.d410′).each( function(e) { e.visualEffect(’slide_up’,{duration:0.5}) }); [...]
April 27, 2009 at 11:50 am |
bring back snacks
April 27, 2009 at 6:56 pm |
[...] I first heard news of the attacks, it was already a week old, TIME’s whitewashing came two weeks after the results of the hack were published. Portraying [...]
April 27, 2009 at 6:58 pm |
[...] "the game is what you just lost." [...]
April 27, 2009 at 8:37 pm |
btw, there is such a thing as marble cake. My German Grandmother has made it for years! It’s a combination of vanilla cake batter and chocolate cake batter. Both are poured into a bundt pan, a knife is swirled through the two batters, and the result is a marbled pattern.
April 29, 2009 at 12:11 pm |
Nice Article. The hack itself is audacious, but any good web programmer should be able to pull this off even with out help given the balls and inclination. There’s standard inventive problem solving and basic code breaking, I like the idea of tricking people to fool the captcha though! Time mag is the middle to higher part of a bloated media refinary and some sinisisem and humour are a good thing. Acording to some research I did after reading this, http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/09/palin-hacker-gr#previouspost for example, Moot may have predated on a number of innocents in a vicious manner reveiling a sadistic streak. Also it seems criminal investigations into these other matters, and the point that his true identity is now public domain, mean this activity could soon be muted.
May 4, 2009 at 1:09 pm |
Thanks a lot, wonderful post.
May 14, 2009 at 4:28 pm |
[...] Precision hacking the wisdom of crowds [...]
May 19, 2009 at 2:54 am |
The Hierarchy Encompassing World Organizations & Regions, Leading “Democracy”. Is Simply, Rationally, Organizationally, Totally, Tragically, Insignificant & Nonexistent, Guys. THE REASON ANYBODY DOES ANYTHING, Wealth, Crime, War, Fame, is for one reason and one reason only. Happiness & Teh Lulz. and for the most part, if you look at the world we live in anarchy. nations only reason being, trying to “save citizens” (Fail) by blowing other nations off the map, and by not actually just helping our citizens. instead we get red tape and pink slips.
August 14, 2009 at 4:22 pm |
Dude! I Love Tupac!
December 24, 2009 at 2:47 am |
Спорно, но как вариант имеет право на жизнь