This morning Time.com published the final result for their annual TIME 100 Poll. Time reports that the new owner of the title ‘Worlds’s most influential person, is moot’. What TIME doesn’t say is that their poll was so totally manipulated that the results of the poll are not an indication of who is the most influential, but instead they stand as a monument to Time’s incompetence.
Looking at the poll results we see clear evidence of the hack. The first letters of the top 21 finalists in the poll spell out ‘Marblecake, also the game’. Evidence of precision hackery for anyone to see. And yet, Time says they rebuffed all attempts to hack the poll. Quoting from the time article: “TIME.com’s technical team did detect and extinguish several attempts to hack the vote”. Which leads me to wonder whether Time.com is being dishonest or is just plain incompetent. Considering Hanlon’s razor , I have to go with incompetence. (And if you have any doubt about Time’s incompetence, take a close look at the Poll. Notice that Oprah Winfrey and Ratan Tata have the exact same number of votes. That’s because they both shared the same ID in the poll. A vote for either one was a vote for the other. Same goes for Michael Bloomberg and Gustavo Dudamel. If you vote for one, you vote for the other.)
How did the hack happen? I’ve already described in great detail the steps that the loose collective known as ‘Anonymous’ took to hack the poll. This group (that gathered on an IRC channel at anonnet.org) probed for weaknesses in the poll protocols and wrote autovoters to stuff the ballot box with votes that would put the candidates in the proper order to spell out the Message, adapting as necessary whenever Time adjusted its protocol in a meager attempt to keep the hackers out. But two weeks ago, Time got serious about poll security. They modified the poll so that you needed to prove that you were human (via a captcha) in order to vote.
This instantly shut down all of the autovoters. Anonymous was offline – no longer able to submit thousands of votes per minute. And what’s worse, when the autovoters were shutdown, the Message ‘Marblecake, also the game’ soon decayed into a meaningless “mablre caelakosteghamm”. It seemed that Time.com had won - the Message would not survive the next two weeks of voting. But Anonymous didn’t give up, they considered it a challenge to restore the Message. Here’s how they did it.
Update -4/29 Professor Luis von Ahn, the project lead for reCAPTCHA, sent me a very polite email suggesting that I change a few words here to make it clear to a casual reader that reCAPTCHA was not hacked. I agree that the original post could be easily misinterpreted by a casual reader, so I’ve changed a couple of words here and there to make it absolutely clear that reCAPTCHA was not compromised for the Time Poll.
First attempt – trying (and failing) to crack reCAPTCHA
The first thing Anonymous tried to do was tried to break reCAPTCHA, the captcha technology used by Time.com. They built a program that would analyze the images, break the words into characters and apply OCR to the images in an attempt to automate the captcha process. However, unsurprisingly, it proved to be too difficult of a task – certainly that was a nut that would take more than a week to crack. So after a few days, they abandoned this approach.
Second Attempt: trying (and failing) to hack reCAPTCHA – ‘The Penis Flood’
The next tactic used was to see if they could find a flaw in the reCAPTCHA implementation. One thing they discovered about reCAPTCHA was that it always presents two words to a user for decoding – one word is a control word known by the reCAPTCHA system, while the other is an unknown word (reCAPTCHA uses the humans to help correct OCR errors). Wikipedia describes the process: “Scanned text is subjected to analysis by two different optical character recognition programs; in cases where the programs disagree, the questionable word is converted into a CAPTCHA. The word is displayed along with a control word already known and is labeled by the human. Those words that are consistently given a single label by human judges are recycled as control words”. 
What Anonymous realized was that if they always labeled the unknown scanned text with the same word – and if they did this thousands and thousands of times eventually a large percentage of the unknown words would be mislabeled with their word. All they had to do was look at the two words in the captcha, enter the proper label for the ‘easy’ one (presumably that would be the one that the two optical scanners would agree upon) and enter the word “penis” for the hard one. If they did this often enough, then soon a significant percentage of the images would be labeled as ‘penis’ and the ability to autovote would be restored (one side effect, that was not lost on Anonymous, was the notion that for years to come there would be a number of digital books with the word ‘penis’ randomly inserted throughout the text. Update: I asked Ben Maurer, chief engineer of reCAPTCHA about this ‘penis flood‘ attack, Ben says that they’ve anticipated this type of attack and they have numerous protections that will keep the penises from penetrating the reCAPTCHA barrier. Update – 4/29 – Luis von Ahn, the project lead of reCAPTCHA goes on to say ” about the “penis attack”. We serve over 400 million CAPTCHAs per week, so submitting 200k CAPTCHAS with the word penis doesn’t even come close to poisoning our database — we serve each word to multiple random users, and we require them to be correct on the other word, so to get any traction with this attack, they would have had to submit at least 100 times more CAPTCHAs. And even if they did this, we have many other measures against it. That attack simply doesn’t work.“
Third Attempt: Optimizing reCAPTCHA entry
As appealing as the notion of sprinkling the word ‘penis’ into texts, the Anonymous team knew that the clock was ticking, and if they were going to restore the Message they didn’t have time to wait for the autovoters to come back online – they were going to have to vote manually, many, many times. And so they needed to be able to enter captcha’s as fast as they could. They developed a set of guidelines that allowed them to quickly decide which reCAPTCHA words they could skip. For example:
You will be given 2 words: 1 real, 1 fake.
For [REAL FAKE] or [FAKE REAL], you can just type in REAL and it should be accepted.
If it’s [LOOKSREAL LOOKSREAL] or [LOOKSFAKE LOOKSFAKE], it’s usually just quicker to just type in both words. Don’t waste precious time deciding which one of them is real.
Use both the appearance and the type of word to identify a fake
word. Don’t rely on just one of them.
The whole ruleset is here: fake captcha
By understanding how reCAPTCHA worked – the team was able to double their productivity (since they usually only had to enter one word instead of two). To further optimize their voting they created a poll front-end that allowed you to enter votes quickly while giving you an update of the poll status (and since it is a 4chan kind of crowd, they also provided the option to stream some porn just to keep you company while you are subverting one of the largest media companies in the world.
They found that with this version of the manual loader, the thing that was taking the most time was loading the captcha images, so they made a bare bones version that loaded 3 captchas at a time, in the background eliminating this bottleneck, and doubling their manual voting speed once more (and showing them vote per minute stats).
Update – Just to be perfectly clear, anon didn’t hack reCAPTCHA. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. It shut down the auto voters instantly and effectively. The only option left after Time added reCAPTCHA to the poll was a brute force attack. Ben Maurer, (chief engineer on reCAPTCHA) comments on the hack: “reCAPTCHA put up a hard to break barrier that forced the attackers to spend hundreds of hours to obtain a relatively small number of votes. reCAPTCHA prevented numerous would-be attackers from engaging in an attack. In any high-profile system, it’s important to implement reCAPTCHA as part of a larger defense-in-depth strategy”. As Dr. von Ahn points out “had Time used reCAPTCHA from the beginning, this would have never happened — anon submitted *tens of millions* of votes before Time added reCAPTCHA, but they were only able to submit ~200k afterwards. And to do this, they had to resort to typing the CAPTCHAs by hand!” One thing that Time inc. did that made it much easier for the anonymous hack was to allow leave the door open for cross-site request forgeries which allowed anon to create a streamlined poll that never had to fetch data from Time.com.
Brute Force
With the streamlined manual voting process, a single, motivated voter could cast 30 votes per minute (perhaps only 20 VPM if they were watching porn). But some calculations showed that they needed about 200K votes to cast to get everyone in their proper position. If they were going to succeed they really had to organize their votes. They churned the numbers and came up with this plan:
TOTAL VOTES NEEDED 191,209
Alexander Levedev (up to 37.5) 6,541 votes
Rick Warren (more than 1,902,130) 7,255 votes
Kobe Bryant (up to 39.50) 109,174 votes
Sheikh Ahmed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (up to 35.50) 5,000 votes
Hu Jintao (up to 31.50) 19,836 votes
Elizabeth Warren (up to 27.50) 43,403 votes
With a sprinkling of help from folks on /b/, the core team of about a dozen got down to manual voting. (To get help from /b/ they put together info on how to streamline the captcha process, how to configure the browser to mask referrals, deal with proxies and provided some other (perhaps not-safe-for work incentives). Some of the most hardcore voters (I call them ‘devoters’) spent 40+ hours voting. At their peak, they were casting about 200 votes per minute (compared to the many, many thousands per minute that they could cast via autovoter before Time added the captcha).
With 200k votes to cast, they knew it would be close, and they didn’t know exactly when the polls were closing. In the final days the crew was getting demotivated. But one boost to their productivity and morale occurred when they sussed out how Time actually did the final ordering (they round the average rating to the nearest rating, and then use the total number of votes to break a tie). With this little nugget of information, they were able to redistribute how they voted, eliminating the need for about 30K of the 200K votes. They discovered a few more quirks in how Time.com ranked the candidates which allowed them to shave even more votes off the required total for a total savings of 46k votes. With these vote savings, the goal was close at hand, with their boosted morale they were able to push across the finish line.
The End Game
Finally, on Friday, Time closed the poll, but funny thing was they didn’t turn off the polling URLs, so even though you couldn’t vote through the official Time.com website, it was still possible to vote via the streamlined manual voter – and so the ballot stuffing continued. On Saturday afternoon, the message was restored, but the voting continued – as the team tried to gain a cushion of safety, should voters for other candidates mess things up at the last minute. Early morning on April 27th Time.com published the results. And there, for the whole world to see was the message, completely intact,”mARBLECAKE ALSO THE GAME”.
Celebrations were in order – there was cake
and happy faces
and a general sigh of relief from the group.
It is 12 hours after Time.com poll has been closed. The mood among Anonymous is high – the hack was completed, it is there for the world to see. Time.com behaved as expected – they refused to acknowledge the hack and the Message – but the word is out there. People are reading about the hack on 4chan, Reddit and Digg – people know that the poll was hacked and they know that Anonymous is responsible. They started with a goal and despite some rather severe setbacks were able to meet that goal
From where I sit, I really have to wonder about Time.com. They spent their time promoting and running this poll that they know (or should know) is a total farce. They give a wink and nudge to the questionable results by saying “This is an Internet poll. Doubting the results is kind of the point.” Which is just stupid. Perhaps the point should be “if you want to maintain any kind of journalistic integrity, don’t conduct online polls”.
So what’s next for Anonymous? One hacker (knowing the stereotype people have for an Anonymous hacker) says “we’re going to resume masturbating and being the total failures that we are “. When I asked Zombocom, the mastermind of the Message , if he had any message for moot – the man that they put on top of the world – Zombocom replied: ‘ “The Game” – but still, enjoy it.’
Update: A mini-interview with moot:
A friend put me in touch with moot so I could ask him about the hack. Since he’s so influential I kept my questions short and to the point. Here’s the mini-interview:
Time makes a joke a your expense (“To put the magnitude of the upset in perspective, it’s worth noting that everyone Moot beat out actually has a job. “). Any response to Time magazine about this:
I wasn’t offended by the blurb on TIME.com. To clarify, I never claimed to be unaware of the “concerted plan to influence the poll,” just that I hadn’t instructed anybody to vote for me. They did it all on their own (as you already know).
Time also indicates that they rebuffed the attempts to hack the poll. (“TIME.com’s technical team did detect and extinguish several attempts to hack the vote. “). This seems to me to be a lie. Likewise, they ignore the ‘marblecake, also the game’ message completely. Anything to say about this?
Honestly, I think Time had as much fun with the poll as we all did. It drove a lot of traffic to their site, and after the final results were released, generated a lot of buzz about the upcoming issue.
There’s a group of a dozen or so guys who’ve devoted a couple of months to this. Anything to say to them?
As for a response to the players: “Thanks.”
There really was cake.
Looks photoshopped. The cake is a lie!
The cake is always a lie!
The cake wasn’t a lie, /N/!
Gotta say, this was indeed a triumph.
And anon, we never lie about cake. ;)
I think it’s Time to make a note about how this was a huge success.
Bah, that stopped being funny in 2007 :P
Also, Marblecake forever. Also, http://www.losethegame.com
For some reason i got happy inside ;D Meybe now moot will find a way to get out of debt ;]
Hi,
I’m the chief engineer on reCAPTCHA. Manual typing is a well known aspect of CAPTCHAs. The goal of a CAPTCHA is to make it difficult for an attacker to acquire a lot of votes — but not to make it impossible. In this case, reCAPTCHA did it’s job — it was not able to be beaten with OCR and required many, many hours of manual labor to achieve the desired results. Typically, high-value targets use CAPTCHAs as part of a defense-in-depth strategy — it’s not clear what other filters (if any) Time applied to clean up the results.
Two things I’d point out:
1) The “penis” attack simply won’t work. We know about this. Each word goes out to multiple users. Because of our high volume, it’s extremely unlikely to see the same word enough times to shift the vote on it. We also have a number of filters to detect people who always type offensive answers.
2) Typing only one word is marginally effective. We’ve generally found that people do a so-so job on this (especially people who are being paid to do CAPTCHA typing as opposed to willing volunteers).
Btw, if anybody involved in doing this wants to have a friendly chat — email us at support@recaptcha.net. There might be a t-shirt in it for you :-).
> In this case, reCAPTCHA did it’s job — it was not able
> to be beaten with OCR and required many, many hours of
> manual labor to achieve the desired results.
So you are saying that in a large-scale poll, where it takes millions of votes to sway the results one way or another, (re)CAPTCHA is effective as long as there is not a massive concerted manual effort? For a much smaller poll, where the total number of results is in the hundreds or thousands, (re)CAPTCHA would be much less effective.
> We also have a number of filters to detect people
> who always type offensive answers.
The only reason the word “penis” was chosen was because 4channers have the maturity level of . . . 4channers. There’s nothing about the strategy that necessitates the word being particularly offensive; a “cabbage” flood would be equally effective.
–Chris
>So you are saying that in a large-scale poll, where it >takes millions of votes to sway the results one way or >another, (re)CAPTCHA is effective as long as there is >not a massive concerted manual effort? For a much >smaller poll, where the total number of results is in >the hundreds or thousands, (re)CAPTCHA would be much >less effective.
Sure, if you have a poll of 100 people, a CAPTCHA really isn’t going to be effective. Any poll that small is easy to influence, you could probably swing it one way or the other just by writing a blog entry that said “hey, go vote on this poll”.
Even large polls can be “broken” without having to exploit security issues. Look at what Colbert did on the NASA poll.
>The only reason the word “penis” was chosen was because >4channers have the maturity level of . . . 4channers. >There’s nothing about the strategy that necessitates the >word being particularly offensive; a “cabbage” flood >would be equally effective.
Checking for offensive words is only one of the filters we have. Even without that filter, it’s essentially impossible to get recaptcha to return a false result.
That’s what he’s saying, and he’s right.
ReCAPTCHA is not a ballot-stuffing prevention system. It is a Turing test, and one so good that only human eyeballs could defeat it.
The CAPTCHAs ultimately forced all the voters to be human, more or less. There were several non-CAPTCHA weaknesses that made voting faster than it would be for non-4chan humans, but that’s not reCAPTCHA’s fault.
Hi Ben,
From where I’m sitting, reCAPTCHA is a good service. It does what it does well.
To everyone else, I don’t work for reCAPTCHA.
So, one of the points is that Time really need to compliment CAPTHCA with other filters, such as one vote per IP. Still some room for shenanigans, particularly when you have a large audience of “attackers”, but likely would have allowed such a granular manipulation of the results.
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses Music Machinery (tags: 4chan anonymous time moot) [...]
[...] Inc gets hacked by ‘Anonymous‘ over at 4chan. Awesome job, guys & [...]
I think the results are earned. I mean, they spent a lot of time and effort in making the message so in a way they deserve it.
What a complete waste of time. And way to mess up the reCaptcha system.
you’re forgetting something more important than the recaptcha system, which is epic lulz
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses Required reading for anyone creating voting systems online. (tags: community voting time) [...]
I indeed call that a win of all sorts. Time’s incompetence could not simply be overlooked, which is why I’m happy you didn’t ignore it.
*sends 9001 internets to MusicMachinery*
Oh, and btw, if you’re ever in dire need of a larger writing staff, I’m a soon-to-be published author with some need of work. I’m not expecting monetary sustenance, either. XP
Here’s my email if you’re interested, or just talk to me in the irc: Tweezer510@aim.com
Moot prevails hurray
this whole set of posts about the time.com seems to me like just marblecake self-importance wankery
anonymous is anonymous
It’s epic, that’s for sure.
If it wasn’t Time one could suspect online polls couldda been “fixed” at predecessor polls. But as the poll organizer knew Anonymous was keeping books on the total amount of votes for every single top rank, so no way to “fix” the outcome of the vote. _That_ wouldda be an incentive to keep things the way they were. But of course that couldn’t happen here simply because it’s Time.
Fuck.
I’ve just lost the game.
[...] in first place is “Moot,” followed by Anwar Ibrahim and then Rick Warren. As Lamere points out, take the first letters of the top 21 finalists and you get, “Marblecake, also the [...]
[...] Like if there was any doubt about it, here’s how the results were hacked. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)A cup of JO: Invest in coffee with an ETNThe [...]
popurls.com // popular today…
story has entered the popular today section on popurls.com…
All that effort for something that’s completely pointless.
‘Twas done for teh lulz. Everyone knows that lulz are the only legitimate reason for doing anything.
[...] Read the original and in-depth article on MusicMachinery.com: http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/ [...]
[...] the original and in-depth article on MusicMachinery.com: http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/ :and the game, hack, hacked, hacker, marble cake, most influential person, music machinery, [...]
What a bunch of douchebags. Organizing a huge manual voting effort isn’t cracking anything. It doesn’t really seem especially “epic” to me. Just kind of 8th grade.
You ass, I just lost the game now too.
Why didn’t Time simply hacked the code/DB whatever to force the poll to read something else?
Maybe… maybe it was Time people who did the hack, and this whole stuff is a plot to raise Time.com traffic even higher?
I doubt it, known 4channers were part of it, and they couldn’t keep a secret like that.
[...] an explanation, read this, this and [...]
Are you kidding? this is a huge win for Time. I bet their online site never had as much attention as this hack (and all the stories and blog posts and digg/reddit posts etc.) generated. Who cares from time’s perspective the “integrity” of their vote. As a viral marketing campaign to drive people to time.com this little voting gimmick must have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Watch for them to try and do this again. They should be paying Anonymous for all this free marketing and word of mouth…
[...] Music Machinery: “moot wins, Time Inc. loses” [...]
[...] (the internet is a weird place) [...]
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses at Music Machinery Posted by Erik 28 April 2009 hacking, moot, most influential, reCAPTCHA, Time, Time 100 Ever Devised by Human Ingenuity [...]
[...] or how Time Inc got their asses handed to them by a bunch of internet users with a great deal of time, creativity, imagination and just plain pwn [...]
[...] Nest hero When I’m not blogging about hacking online polls – I spend my time at The Echo Nest where I get to do some really cool things with music. Over the [...]
[...] Paul Lamere’s coverage of the Time 100 hack continues with this in-depth examination of the ho…. [...]
Wow – I can’t wait for all voting to go on the internet.
awesome
What the hell is going on here? hahaha.
epic published lulz.
It may stand as a monument to Time’s incompetance – but it ALSO stands as a monument to how influential Moot, and 4Chan, really are.
Only if you’re enough of a fucking idiot to consider 4chan influential, or moot for that matter. It’s like calling some neighbourhood punk who lights a bag of dog shit and leaves it on your porch “influential” because he gets on your nerves. That’s all Anonymous really are, a bunch of social rejects who take out their frustrations on the Internet (being the only outlet for cowards like them to express their inner bitterness).
You hit the nail on the head. :D And btw, the ones who really executed this “hack” (it wasn’t a hack at all) aren’t your average /b/tards. We’re much more intelligent and compassionate than that. :)
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“‘influential’ because he gets on your nerves.”
If something gets on your nerves, that means it’s influential. Nice try.
Considering the poll was for the most influential person, it did precisely what it was meant to do. Obviously this moot character is the most influential, if _other_ people worked so hard to put him at the top.
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses « Music Machinery. var addthis_pub = ‘moronmeter’; var addthis_language = ‘en’;var addthis_options = ‘email, favorites, digg, delicious, myspace, google, facebook, reddit, live, more’; VN:F [1.2.2_602]please wait…Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast) [...]
[...] Brought to you by Feedtwitt.info Visit the Original Page . FEEDTWITT holds no relation with the website. . Please see our Privacy Policy var [...]
[...] Of particular interest in this embarrassment is the testing of reCAPTCHA, the defense against spam comment submission on this website and many others. The blog Music Machinery has been tracking Time’s losing struggle to shore up their poll against a flood of bogus submissions, and has a particularly detailed rundown of their manipulations of ReCAPTCHA. [...]
[...] Also interesting read. Original page? (which if you looked enough you’ll see the upvoters were made with Delphi. [...]
Classic – that really made my day!
I lost the game, but you sirs deserve an internet or three. Well played.
[...] Marblecake, Also the Game That was the message encoded in TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2009 by none other than Anonymous. These 4chan residents jumped into action and hacked the poll, not only making sure that moot, the founder of 4chan, tops the list, but also being careful to arrange the order of winners up to the 21st so that the list would read, “mARBLECAKE ALSO THE GAME”. TIME already made the list official – epic win for moot and Anonymous — but completely denied the hack. You can read the details of the hack here. [...]
[...] witzige News! Eine Hacker-Gruppe hat Recaptcha überlistet. Captchas erstellen zufällige Grafiken, oft mit [...]
[...] Du kan lese en mer grundig gjennomgang av hvordan de hacket Time her. [...]
Alas, such talent wasted on trivial pursuits.
Trivial Pursuit? That’s a game…
ARGH, LOST AGAIN!
This was a triumph.
Good work guys. reCAPTCHA is for retards and TIME.
moot is a fgt
everyone knows wirah runs marblecake and caused most of the drama of the universe
[...] reading how the captcha technology used by Time.com was hacked http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/ [...]
@Ryan Cousineau
No, it isn’t. A Turing test has a human sitting on the other side checking for authenticity of the input, not an algorithm.
You seem to be missing the point of a CAPTCHA (also known as a Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart).
[...] 4chan pwnz TIME.com, duży szacun, za całość przedsięwzięcia w sumie; [...]
[...] has a couple of excellent posts on 4chan’s triumphant carpetbombing (pre-captcha and post-captcha).Time, Inc. has responded to their complete failure with all the dignity and good humor of a [...]
[...] rigged the results of the annual Time 100 [...]
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses (Music [...]
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses « Music Machinery. This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 3:31 pmand is filed under Humor, Vigilanteism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. [...]
[...] the vote from being manipulated, because otherwise, they pretty much suck at what they were doing. Music Machinery has a great write-up of how Anonymous pulled off rigging the vote, even working through reCAPTCHA. [...]
I hate how so many people are saying Time copped out.
“Which is just stupid. Perhaps the point should be “if you want to maintain any kind of journalistic integrity, don’t conduct online polls”.
Get over it, that’s how democracy works, and it’s why it sucks. What do you think lobbyists are? Autovoters IRL. Corporate money is to elections as 4chan is to this Time poll. 4chan got their guy and their message in there because they manipulated the system, just like in real politics and in real democracy. The only true “pure” gauge of what the masses want is the free market.
Yeah I’m sure the basement dwelling pedophiles that make up /b/ must have sprained their wrists wanking themselves over this one. Who gives a shit?
You obviously do by posting here. FAIL. Go back to your underachieving life, void of any happiness. No one loves you.
Way to give attention to the guy craving attention.
guys, don’t feed teh troll. Haven’t you learned anything?
[...] How 4chan’s moot won the annual TIME 100 Poll [...]
[...] Obviously 4chan voted and hacked the vote so moot would win. However as the picture points out the members also managed to precision hack the survey so the first letters of the first 21 people on the list would spell out “Marblecakes also The Game”, a phrase which refers to two jokes on the site. Hacking like this takes a huge amount of people with a huge amount of time as Time Magazine had high quality captchas and dedicated staff working to make sure this could not happen. People and time is exactly what 4chan has. The mind-blowingly complicated and ingeneous way they hacked the survey is detailed in full here. It…. [...]
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses This morning Time.com published the final result for their annual TIME 100 Poll. Time reports that the new owner of [...] [...]
WOW! Am I the ONLY one to see the significance here??!! Hellooooo! Peeooople!! He’s finally out of Court!! Hellooooooooooooo!! Congrats, moot!
[...] moot is the world’s most influential person. One wonders if Time really understands how comprehensively they were hacked. They went as far as to write about Will this stop them from using polls on the [...]
Flawless victory.
posting in epic bread
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses « Music Machinery This morning Time.com published the final result for their annual TIME 100 Poll. Time reports that the new owner of the title ‘Worlds’s most influential person, is moot’. What TIME doesn’t say is that their poll was so totally manipulated that the results of the poll are not an indication of who is the most influential, but instead they stand as a monument to Time’s incompetence. (tags: articles news technology internet community magazine 2009 funny poll) [...]
I HAD KITTENS. Fapped. Had moar KITTENS. Died.
Necromanced.
/sigh.
lol, moot moot moot
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses « Music Machinery (tags: hacking internet security web media captcha) [...]
The marble cake could have had a reCAPTCHA pairing of words written in icing.
Little ahrd, sorry. Next time :3
[...] April 29, 2009 moot wins, Time Inc. loses « Music Machinery. [...]
Looks like SOMEBODY (article writer) doesn’t understand the definition of ‘hack.’ This poll was not hacked. Stop saying it was.
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses « Music Machinery VN:F [1.2.2_602]please wait…Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast) [...]
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses (Music [...]
Absolutely 100% brilliant!
[...] the full story, in exhaustive detail, is told at the blog Music Machinery. Here are a few choice excerpts (the [...]
Shut up. Of course this was a hack, and a brilliant one to boot with. Check the jargon file for a definition.
So Manny Pacquiao is the winner??
Still, 4chan is the real winner.. LOL!
[...] http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/ [...]
[...] most influential person, thanks to the site’s anarchic users hacking the vote. Music Machinery has the inside story, while Jason Kottke compares it to his own attempt to sway the poll back in [...]
[...] todo este lío e incluso hasta poner una mini-entrevista realizada a Moot (ganador de la encuesta). La anotación titulada “Moot wins, Time Inc. loses” [en inglés] (bastante entretenida por cierto) hace énfasis en la traba que ponen en estos casos [...]
A win is a win. No matter the method was.
interesting!
is there a solution to stop this hack..?
what a laugh. ^_^
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses « Music Machinery – "Marblecake, also the game" ha hahack humor [...]
“There’s a group of a dozen or so guys who’ve devoted a couple of months to this.”
I only wish I had such Copious Free Time.
Time: Bastion of journalistic integrity or spearhead developer of online polling systems?
I doubt I’ll trust a word they say in the future, especially if they try to spin this like “There’s no secret message, you’re just seeing things”.
[...] person. And, this was no small feat. Anonymous spent many man hours hacking the website. Music Machinery has the full [...]
None of the other fgts on the poll had enough influence for troops to SPONTANEOUSLY rally and rock the vote. moot wins the internets; all else is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
[...] Read more… [...]
[...] sa gaseasca un punct sensibil de care sa se foloseasca. Si au reusit, asa cum puteti citi pe MusicMachinery, desi au fost nevoiti sa dea manual cateva sute de mii de voturi. Ca bonus, au oferit divertisment [...]
[...] Time Inc. loses”, url: “http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/” }); | PrintThis “In a stunning result, the winner of the third annual TIME 100 poll and new owner of the title [...]
This is proof that the world’s most influential person is the anonymous Internet user. Also, the game.
[...] nachlesen will, wie das mit dem Hack vom Time 100 Poll funktioniert hat, der führe sich bitte diesen Artikel zu Gemüte. Captchas vertraut man danach allerdings nicht mehr [...]
One other thing that all Internet polls should do: they should _not_ show the results of the poll until the polls change. This is for two reasons:
* For a politically charged poll, the side that is ‘losing’ can see that and then send out a call to their supporters to swamp the site again.
* For those who are building automated tools to influence polls, they get real time feedback on their progress.
It’s better to keep everyone in the dark until the poll is closed, like real voting.
[...] about it moot must be pretty influential to harness the power of all those people to game the poll. Moot got to the top of the Time’s World’s Most Influential Person list by gaming the poll. § [...]
[...] Time won’t admit it, their poll on the most influential person was hacked. Moot, the founder of 4chan is rated #1. Not only that, but if you read the first letters of the [...]
Its hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Also, anyone who doubts that this is in any way hacking doesn’t understand the word hack. Just because they’re not breaking into the site and changing things manually doesn’t mean that they didn’t break the system for their own use. In terms of network security, most hacking is done offline. The easiest way to hack a network is to gain access through legitimate means, such as convincing someone to give you a real username/password. Social engineering is the hacker’s best friend.
This *was* a triumph, I agree!
And I also agree on the “hack” business- if they described it as a crack, that’d be incorrect (a crack is literally breaking into the system and changing it), but a hack is more like a clever (mis)use of something, usually exploiting a loophole.
So it sort of fits.
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses « Music Machinery How the nice people at 4chan hacked the TIME 100 poll. "The first letters of the top 21 finalists in the poll spell out ‘Marblecake, also the game’." (del.icio.us tags: 4chan ) 4chan, links | 29 April 2009 at 11:00 pm | RSS « Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin Some related posts: [...]
[...] responsible are overjoyed that their ballot-stuffing was so successful. They will tell you — in full technical detail — how they accomplished the [...]
Anon wins.
[...] Time won’t admit it, their poll on the most influential person was hacked. Moot, the founder of 4chan is rated #1. Not only that, but if you read the first letters of the [...]
[...] Here is a story how it happened from MusicMachinery.com: moot wins, Time Inc. loses [...]
ABSURD! Everybody knows there is no cake.
That’s not true. It shows up on the table, next to the radio after you beat GLaDOS.
So this is how Obama’s poll numbers are faked.
It’s hardly a “hack” if people had to spend 40+ hours voting! Seriously, I can think of 100 other things I’d rather do with 40 hours than create a message on some idiotic online poll.
[...] Moot wins, Time,inc looses? [...]
a “triumph”? a “win”? what are you talking about? this is a tragedy! newfagflood
It would be terrific if you guys could somehow donate .01 percent of this effort to, I don’t know, curing cancer or unlocking some riddle of the universe. Why don’t you approach the NCI or WHO and say that you have an inexhaustible team of highly intelligent, er, information engineers that would put in countless hours of labor? If there are lulz to be had, I mean.
Or form your own rogue organization and crack cold fusion, perpetual energy, or self-mutating vaccines.
some people are too bored. LOL
all hail boredom
Sometimes, “‘Worlds’s most influential person” is still believable for us.
[...] Music Machinery on how the Time 100 was hacked. [...]
[...] Music Machinery on how the Time 100 was hacked. [...]
[...] Unlike the popular voting as some people are alleging (via Drew Benvie). [...]
This is the most pathetic and sad thing I’ve ever seen a group of people on the internet get together and do and that’s saying a LOT.
[...] Update : ขั้นตอนการแฮกโดยละเอียดจาก MusicMachinery ตอน 1, ตอน 2 [...]
[...] Hier findet sich die sehr interessant zu lesende Geschichte wie das Hacker-Kollektiv Anonymous eine unglaublich schlecht gesicherte Online-Umfrage bei Time manipuliert hat. [...]
[...] mARBLECAKEALSOTHEGAME [...]
[...] http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses :/b/, 4chan, lol, lulz, time, win [...]
Great job /b/rothers. Could we bring down the New World Order nao?
mARBLECAKEALSOTHEGAME
Time to resume work on Scientology.
[...] Jack on Sunday, 2009-May-10th at 11:23 am Here’s a great article on how Anonymous managed to poison Time Inc.’s list of the most influential people of [...]
Is it just me or was that an advertisment for REcaptcha…. I feel dirty… Also, You all lost the game. Except those of you who won it.
15 years ago an 18 year old seppo told me that Time magazine regurgitated the conventional wisdom about 12 months after it went past its sell-by date. I.e. by the time something gets into Time, it is pretty much played out, old news, and about to lose any relevance, energy or interest it once had.
[...] קשה, מלוכלך ומרשים כדי שהמועמד שלה יזכה (הבלוג Music Machinery סיקר בפרוטרוט את המאמץ הקולקטיבי). אנשי טיים טענו שאיתרו נסיונות ההאקינג, חסמו וניטרלו [...]
great!
[...] hier nachzulesen hat die Gruppe letztens die jährliche Umfrage der einflussreichsten Personen der Welt [...]
[...] The Time Magazine poll for the World’s Most Influential Person was rigged. [...]
[...] [upmod] [downmod] moot wins, Time Inc. loses « Music Machinery (musicmachinery.com) 1 points posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago by jeethu tags media hack recaptcha [...]
[...] [...]
fail article is fail
Tumblelog: 09xxx2…
Spinning vinyl – an ipod app, an application that uses the accelerometer to simulate a spinning vinyl record.
BeRTOS, a free real-time operating system.
"Chip Dip" by Tara Kalwarski
Solutions for tracing UNIX applications, if you ever have a …
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses, Time Inc was hacked by 4chan users. [...]
Love this, they deserve the results :)
and reCAPTCHA is very good .
[...] The Time Magazine poll for the World’s Most Influential Person was rigged. [...]
[...] que ya habían realizado antes un ataque al Times, realizaron ayer un ataque a YouTube como protesta por el continuo borrado de música de parte de [...]
[...] This website also talks about how it was done: http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27…ime-inc-loses/ [...]
[...] Its pretty easy to design and write a good captcha using PHP GD or something similar. If you cant be bothered to write a captcha then services such as reCAPTCHA exist which can provide you with an effective captcha solution (although this is vulnerable to the “penis flood attack“) [...]
cake was delicious
i lol’d so hard at this article.
This article was harsh on time. I voted for moot myself over a thousand times…. Over the course of a day I would vote like 30 times.
Ah!
lol…
[...] Now technically, this didn’t actually work — and rather crucially I don’t think this was what I said — as although the people behind the scheme ended up still gaming the poll successfully, they in the end had to rely upon a brute force manual scheme. But despite that the ‘Penis flood’ story is too good not to include. You might also want to note that other people tell it better than me. [...]
[...] [...]
Accusing someone of ‘cheating’ in an influence poll is meaningless. Obviously whoever came out with the most votes – cheating or not – is the most influential.
[...] 史上最簡單又最難贏的遊戲：The Game 標籤: board game The Game 這個遊戲 遊戲 昨天看到一篇文章再次談到一個默默風行美國許久的怪怪小遊戲，它叫做「The Game」，就將它翻譯成「這個遊戲」好了。 這名字取得不是很好，因為近期有一本台灣翻作《把妹達人》的書也是叫「The Game」，另外在十年前有一部很精彩的電影也叫做「The Game」。重要的是，我們今天要講的「The Game」並不是網站，也不需要骰子、道具，隨時都可以玩。它的特色是：傳播力極強。在美國從大學生開始傳播，而後到高中生、中學生。 「這個遊戲」到底是啥？ 它，比你想像的還要簡單，但要贏它，卻又非常的困難── 基本上，當你看到這邊，你已經輸了！ 是的，已經輸了。 什麼？哪有這種遊戲的？ 是的，這偉大的遊戲，只有三個規則。 請仔細聽好了！ 規則一：你正在玩「這個遊戲」，現在就在玩了。 規則二：如果你腦子一想到關於「這個遊戲」的任何事情，你就已經輸了這個遊戲。 規則三：當你輸了「這個遊戲」，你一定要和旁人宣布「我已經輸了」！ 基本上就只有以上三條規則，但有些人玩的是變種版。有一變種是你不會馬上輸，只要你在半小時內不再想到「這個遊戲」的事，你就暫時還沒有輸。另一變種是有人說這個遊戲的終止日，就是在「英國首相」（我也不知道為何是英國首相）宣布此遊戲結束時。 曾從一位認識的美國高中生那邊聽過這個遊戲，但當時只被告知「我已經輸了」，我就覺得這只是小孩子的把戲。經過這篇文章，我才看到「這個遊戲」原來 這麼厲害！首先，我認為「這個遊戲」的成功，肯定和文化有很大的關係。美國人本來就喜歡玩紙盤遊戲(board game)，從小就對於「遊戲規則」很是重視。 他們從遊戲規則去認識一個新遊戲，也從仔細遵守著遊戲規則去進行、進而喜愛這個遊戲，看起來是個無聊的紙盤和一堆骰子、卡片、小道具，但他們會很有耐心的 跟著遊戲規則，就算玩三小時才玩出味道也會有耐心。因為這種對遊戲規則的重視，讓「The Game」一開始就可以紅。 不過，有趣的是，目前大家分析「這個遊戲」為何厲害，分析得沒這麼好。他們說，維基百科提到這是一個叫「大白熊理論」，就是說你告訴自己愈不要去想 那隻大白雄，那隻大白熊反而更緊緊的跟在你的記憶裡，每一兩分鐘就要在你腦海中「蹦」出來一次煩死你！但我離開美國，回到台灣，剛好碰到社群網站趨勢起， 我們看得都是「如何靠人傳人爆紅」，從這角度來看「The Game」，會發現，哇塞，它的「設計」真是太容易傳播了── 它設計的巧妙，就是會讓人一直對身邊朋友說「我輸了、我輸了」，靠這樣傳播出去。但，一般人哪有這麼好騙？而且，人性是不喜媚俗的，愈多人傳出去，就愈多人不會去傳。靠這樣遊戲規則來傳出去的很快就會撞到玻璃天花板！但，「The Game」又不同了，因為，你一定會「輸」的，這件事本身就很扯，哪有遊戲一玩就絕對輸的？所以很多人就真的覺得很有意思。 當你的朋友哪天莫名其妙聽到「我已經輸入」，他會有什麼反應？ 他一定會問：「為何你輸了？你在玩什麼？」 如果我愛這位同伴的話，那我不要說。 我不說，他/她就不會知道，所以就不會「輸」了。但，因為我不說，對方反而會更凹著我不放，然後……我們就會說了，說了以後，對方恍然大悟，然後， 他/她也輸了，輸了以後，再去跟其他人說。這段過程中，「我」享受了一些吊人胃口的樂趣，而「他」則享受了好奇心不斷被刺激的樂趣。兩人都因此覺得很有 趣。在這兩位對話進行中，有一方不講秘密，也為遊戲者本身加入了一種「尊貴感」(specialness)。他會覺得自己是屬於一群特殊的族群，因為這樣，他更想將「The Game」的事去告訴他身邊最要好的人，讓「這個遊戲」一傳十、十傳百。 另外，由於「輸」這件事一般來說是很要避免的，所以也造成，這個「一開始就輸的遊戲」彷彿有種很奇特的味道，帶給玩家一種很無可奈何的感覺。這也逼使人們一定要把這件事講出去，不然就「沒有一個結束的感覺」。 再者，「The Game」讓朋友之間有機會以一種不同於平常的方式對話。平常的對話，就算朋友之間也有固定的模式。但玩「The Game」不同，你一定得用「我已經輸了此遊戲」開始，無論你前面加了多少你所習慣的語助詞，這句話本身就是一種讓人覺得很奇怪的開頭方式，也為你和你的 夥伴之間增添另一種從來未有過的對話趣味，促使你會更想去講出去，看朋友的怪表情！還有，「The Game」還有讓兩個嚴肅的朋友放鬆心情的魔力。據報導有一位媽媽知道了此遊戲，就在女兒的手機裡頭放一張紙「The Game」，隔天早上，女兒一看到這張紙條就哈哈大笑，然後只好說：「媽，我輸了這個遊戲！」母女兩人笑成一團。這遊戲的樂趣即在此，你沒想到你最親近的 人會用你以為只有你知道的方法來和你交流。 最後，由於這個名字「這個遊戲」，所以大家也會自然產生打敗對方的信念，大家就在想，要怎麼讓最多人「輸掉遊戲」。這又是另一種樂趣了。有人想到， 在教室黑板上畫上「The Game」兩個字，看你定義，如果看到這圖像就是輸了，那就有效。或是把以上三個定律全部寫在黑板上，然後下面加上第四條：恭喜各位，你們都輸了。現在， 歡迎唯一的贏家進場！就是你大搖大擺的走進來。大家笑一笑。另外，這邊可看到《時代雜誌》2009年百大風雲人物票選，結果，從15名到第21名的候選人的第一個英文字母拼出來，剛好是連續的「THE GAME」字樣，從第一名到第21名的英文字謠傳都是被「駭」出來的，駭客說是因為破解了CAPTCHA讓他們可以放出機器人來「灌票」。我不確定這個「The game」是否就是這個「這個遊戲」，如果是的話，「The game」的威力還真的很驚人。 另外再加一點：「這個遊戲」的贏法就是你不要去想它。不要想它，就是一種「你都不知道的時間」。如果你不看時間，怎麼知道時間過了一小時？這讓人類 喚起最恐怖的記憶，譬如你在生前是在哪裡，死後又去哪裡？這是「你都不知道的時間」，不知道，是一種很奇怪的感覺。於是，玩這麼一個「The Game」簡單遊戲竟有腦子體操、腦筋急轉彎的思考樂趣。 所以，從剛剛，一路寫了而且、另外、再者、還有、最後、再加一點……寫了這麼好幾點之後，你玩了The Game，最後結果就是：大家都知道了「這個遊戲」。 有些很棒的網站或許讓我想出三點他們可以做的東西，但沒有一個網站讓我想出這麼多點……。我才發現，我們一直在說怎麼讓大家傳播出去，其實「大腦」才是傳 播的最根本，真正有效的東西，可以直接使喚一個人每次碰到人就會告訴他「我已經輸了這個遊戲。」換來同學們的不斷詢問：「什麼？什麼意思？」 目前還有誰這樣做網站的？現在，在利用「The Game」的似乎只有「Lose the game」網站已經在賣這個遊戲的種種東西，包括T恤、車上貼紙、馬克杯、海報……都有。不過，這個網站其實在Facebook已有頗大的成就，它在Facebook的專屬頁面已有近13萬名fans加入。另一個關於「The Game」的Facebook討論區也有1萬2千名會員。但，腦筋動得快的人會發現這還不是最好的方法。 網路創業家還可以想出更讓大腦傳播出去的新把戲嗎？不然，參考像是「The Game」，想辦法把這東西變成網路版、動態的網站，應也不錯。 Source 你可以訂閱本站更新 RSS feed 或 通過 電子郵件 訂閱更新. [...]
[...] though, TIME did eventually put up a CAPTCHA to stop the 4chaners, but the 4chan users started manually cracking recaptcha and still rigged the [...]
[...] moot wins, Time Inc. loses Llevar a Tumblr Llevar a Twitter La entrada fue posteada por Dario con las etiquetas Hackers el Friday, August 21st, 2009 a las 5:31 pm archivado bajo las categorías Tecnología. [...]
[...] קשה, מלוכלך ומרשים כדי שהמועמד שלה יזכה (הבלוג Music Machinery סיקר בפרוטרוט את המאמץ הקולקטיבי). אנשי טיים טענו שאיתרו נסיונות ההאקינג, חסמו וניטרלו [...]
[...] for example. Then there are more neutral activities, such as gaming the vote on TIME's website for most influential person in the world. Or, currently, the Body by Victoria contest, in which moot (4chan's founder) [...]
[...] there are more neutral activities, such as gaming the vote on TIME’s website for most influential person in the [...]
What a pointless waste of (T)time… :P
Hey, Carlos Slim has more votes than Eric Holder! (#s 6 &7)
[...] There is a very good writeup by Paul Lamere of Music Machinery of how Anonymous subverted a major poll by Time. AKA “moot wins, Time Inc. loses“. [...]
[...] País, entre sus “bromas” están hazañas como poblar youtube de videos pornográficos, manipular las votaciones sobre los personajes más influyentes de Internet, o hacer que bajen las acciones de Apple difundiendo falsas noticias sobre la salud de Steve [...]
[...] атаки, включая способы обхода капчи доступны здесь и здесь. Любопытно, что Time не стал отменять результаты [...]
Hi, Bastion Host for Uni research project to be up in approx two weeks. Cake for root. No F@g__try in endeavor pleeeese . If box does != failbox, more projects will be allowed meaning more cake. Check out blog and do not spam, admin cats keep careful eye. Butt seriously results will be posted at IT conference, credit to handle of non-F@g__ who can gain root and provide documentation. Seriously guys, got my hands tied, real research project by 3-1 c_H_A_N supporter. Defacing blog would be useless and just prove to people that lack of maturity will prevent people like M T from making $$. Leave mature comments plz.
[...] or once-per-IP… well, most of the people I know can think of trivially easy ways to get around that. So, then, we can just restrict voting to Registered Users – remembering that nobody, anywhere, [...]
[...] or at least none that I could be bothered to delve into. In addition to this, reCAPTCHA was also broken in the annual Time 100 World’s Most Influential People [...]
Epic, without any doubt.
“Accusing someone of ‘cheating’ in an influence poll is meaningless. Obviously whoever came out with the most votes – cheating or not – is the most influential.”
I was thinking that the whole time.
lost the game
[...] impressive orchestrated gaming of Time magazine’s person of the year poll showed how technical loopholes can be exploited in Web-based surveys, but the Facebook campaign is [...]
If not for this, Pacquiao would have his rightful place at the top.
[...] impressive orchestrated gaming of Time magazine’s person of the year poll showed how technical loopholes can be exploited in Web-based surveys, but the Facebook campaign is [...]
[...] destacadas van desde poblar youtube de videos pornográficos, manipular las votaciones sobre los personajes más influyentes de Internet, o hacer que bajen las acciones de Apple difundiendo falsas noticias sobre la salud de Steve [...]
[...] book covers — Peculiar book covers, again — Photosketch — Playground rhymes // Rigging an internet poll // Sand animation — Solitary confinement — Stickney Crater // Teddy bear typologies [...]
Moot and Anonymous are my heroes. Down with the corporate lie/death machine!
top 100, you gotta be kidding me! and carlos slim should be a #6
[...] this. It’s EPIC. http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/ Comments [...]
[...] watching the game. It may seem unrealistic, but remember that a team of only about a dozen rigged TIME’s annual online poll to determine the 100 most influential people in the world. And they arranged the entire top [...]