Christopher Poole,(nick moot) founder of the forum 4chan won the title of the world’s most influential person through a poll ran by Times magazine. We won the title defeating Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Vladimir Putin, Pope Benedict XVI and many others. Moot received 16,794,368 votes and an average influence rating of 90 (out of a possible 100). How this fella became the most influential person at the age of twenty one?
Moot denies knowing about any concerted plan by his followers to influence the poll, though TIME.com’s technical team did detect and extinguish several attempts to hack the vote.
That’s it … the poll was hacked! 4chan members hacked Time magazines top 100 list! The secret of how the epic hack was accomplished is explained in great technical detail at the Music Machinery blog. Read the article ‘Inside the precision hack’ at this URL http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/15/inside-the-precision-hack/
They used program such as Mooter to accomplish this. Mooter is a Delphi app (windows only) that can submit about 300 votes per minute from a single IP address.
It’s really pathetic that Time’s 100 list – can be turned upside down by a bunch of hackers!
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