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Video related to this article is available below.Issue date: 11/21/08 Section: News
Victoria Secret competition gets hacked
Arielle Kane
It was too good to be true.
With more than 5 million votes registered, Drexel University had overwhelmed the Victoria's Secret online poll to become the first school to be added to the Pink Collegiate Collection.
The nearest competition - Texas Tech and George Mason University -trailed behind Drexel by at least two million votes.
Except a majority of the votes from Drexel, and many of the other top 25 schools in the poll, were generated by computer programs.
"Another computer science major and I had found the Facebook group promoting the contest and …we thought it would be funny," said Drexel junior Tim Plunkett.
In the early hours of Oct. 21, Plunkett and his friend created a Perl script that could log 1,500 votes per second on the Victoria's Secret Web site. Twelve hours later, Drexel had gone from 9,000 to 5.2 million votes.
The script took Plunkett all of three minutes and 30 computers to run.
"We're good at what we do."
Plunkett had noticed the lax security surrounding the poll. Other schools noticed, too.
Travis Taylor, a senior at Texas Tech University, said these types of online polls are hard to make secure.
Like Plunkett, he wrote a program that automatically added votes for his school.
"On-line web security is kind of a hobby I guess," he said.
Soon, Taylor and Plunkett found other technophiles who were trying to bypass the poll security system on Facebook and other forums.
Though the various programmers initially exchanged ideas, rivalries arose over who could write the fastest script, especially between Drexel and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"It turned into a thing where we were all seeing who could write the best script … but none of the leading schools really cared," said George Mason freshman Collin Petty.
Finally, Victoria's Secret took notice - and blocked the top five schools from voting after a mass attack from MIT crashed the Web site.
With more than 5 million votes registered, Drexel University had overwhelmed the Victoria's Secret online poll to become the first school to be added to the Pink Collegiate Collection.
The nearest competition - Texas Tech and George Mason University -trailed behind Drexel by at least two million votes.
Except a majority of the votes from Drexel, and many of the other top 25 schools in the poll, were generated by computer programs.
"Another computer science major and I had found the Facebook group promoting the contest and …we thought it would be funny," said Drexel junior Tim Plunkett.
In the early hours of Oct. 21, Plunkett and his friend created a Perl script that could log 1,500 votes per second on the Victoria's Secret Web site. Twelve hours later, Drexel had gone from 9,000 to 5.2 million votes.
The script took Plunkett all of three minutes and 30 computers to run.
"We're good at what we do."
Plunkett had noticed the lax security surrounding the poll. Other schools noticed, too.
Travis Taylor, a senior at Texas Tech University, said these types of online polls are hard to make secure.
Like Plunkett, he wrote a program that automatically added votes for his school.
"On-line web security is kind of a hobby I guess," he said.
Soon, Taylor and Plunkett found other technophiles who were trying to bypass the poll security system on Facebook and other forums.
Though the various programmers initially exchanged ideas, rivalries arose over who could write the fastest script, especially between Drexel and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"It turned into a thing where we were all seeing who could write the best script … but none of the leading schools really cared," said George Mason freshman Collin Petty.
Finally, Victoria's Secret took notice - and blocked the top five schools from voting after a mass attack from MIT crashed the Web site.
Viewing Comments 1 - 6 of 6
Tim
posted 11/22/08 @ 6:24 PM EST
Factual error. I am a pre-junior, or third year student in a five year major. Not a junior.
Eric Norman
posted 11/28/08 @ 6:24 AM EST
Hasn't anyone ever wondered why Wisconsin citizens chose to have a cow on the back of their quarter?
Indigo Casson
posted 12/15/08 @ 8:01 PM EST
Why does the block on MIT stop them? Can't they just use proxies?
Teresa Carder
posted 3/10/09 @ 1:39 PM EST
Thank you for writing the article, I am very pleased with how it came out.
Andrea Godolphin
posted 3/12/09 @ 7:18 AM EST
This sounds like a great program and a great way to improve education in our schools!
Linda Eaton
posted 3/15/09 @ 9:41 AM EST
I have to agree with teh poster above... :/ looks like a lot of hot air to me.
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