Students punk Victoria’s Secret Pink Poll
p2pnet news view | Advertising:- A US university-based advertising stunt by womens’ underwear company Victoria’s Secret scored. Big Time.
And you have to like the Wired Campus headline to a story on the stunt, which kicks off:
“It could be a scene out of ‘Revenge of the Nerds: The Next Next Generation.’ Computer geeks at universities around the country compete to sabotage a Victoria’s Secret contest that is being promoted — on some of the campuses — by sorority members via Facebook.
“At Drexel University and a handful of other colleges, students created computer scripts to sway the contest — an online vote to nominate a university to receive its own clothing line — in their campuses’ favor.”
The header? “Hackers Give Victoria’s Secret Campaign a Virtual Wedgie”. 
Says Drexel’s Triangle »»»
Drexel University is ranked first and has approximately 5.2 million votes on the Victoria’s Secret PINK web site in a competition to nominate schools to receive a PINK collegiate line of clothing.
A computer script was written Oct. 21 around 3 a.m. in about three minutes, and ran for almost 12 hours on 30 different computers, casting approximately 1,500 votes per second, increasing Drexel’s votes from approximately 1,000 to 5.2 million votes on the Victoria’s Secret PINK website, according to Tim Plunkett, a pre-junior computer science major.
Plunkett and another student created an automated voting bot to add to Drexel’s votes on the Victoria’s Secret PINK web site.
“We figured out what happens when you click and we made a computer do that hundreds and hundreds of times without showing anything,” Plunkett said.
Plunkett explained that the script was written out of boredom.
“We thought it was amusing to see the reactions of the people in the group [on Facebook], which were primarily sorority girls … they thought they had organized it very well and were accomplishing this on their own, which was hilarious to us. It was mostly just because we thought it was humorous that people were getting excited that we were winning,” Plunkett said.
Thirty-one universities have their own PINK Collegiate Collection clothing lines, says Wired Campus, adding:
“Students at the contest’s other top four colleges — Texas Tech University (second), George Mason University (third), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (fourth) — all created similar scripts.”
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Wired Campus – Hackers Give Victoria’s Secret Campaign a Virtual Wedgie, December 1, 2008
Triangle – Students fool ‘PINK’ poll, November 14, 2008
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December 2nd, 2008 at 7:33 pm
LMAO … 3 minutes HAHAHA
… if it can be hacked it will be
there’s a fundamental problem with the 8 bit system, it lacks a security or encryption bit [or both]
knowing this anyone can get into anything , no matter how much you try to secure it by outside means ie. encryption, scattering data and other schemes
there was a group of coders in 90’s that created a 10 bit system and it was stolen by USA DOD. It is in their use today. This act made sure regular human beings didn’t have any protection what-so-ever, and here we are today with our privacy rights being trampled on
so pick up all those old code books kids and learn.
happy hacking
just be smart enough not to get caught, a lack of security is your best defense
Enjoy
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:54 am
this is pure brilliance! Too bad SFU isnt allowed into the vote thing, or we could have been right there!
December 6th, 2008 at 8:38 am
“Bored” , get a life geeks .