Samy is my Hero

One of the funniest/coolest things I have seen in a while is the Story of Samy, the MySpace hacker.

Samy signed up to MySpace for all the regular reasons people create accounts: to view pictures and meet girls. The thing is though, Samy wanted to be popular, and when I say popular, I mean really popular. Samy figured out that he could get around MySpace regulations and get HTML in there to add his *special effects*.

I need some more friends. I need people to love me. I delved into the bug and found that I could basically control the web browsing of anyone who hit my profile. In fact, I was able to develop something that caused anyone who viewed my profile to add my name to their profiles list of heroes. It's villainous. I was ecstatic.

But it wasn't enough. I needed more. So I went deeper...a few clicks later, anyone who viewed my profile who wasn't already on my friends list would inadvertently add me as a friend. Without their permission. I had conquered myspace. Veni, vidi, vici.

But it wasn't enough.

If I can become their friend...if I can become their hero...then why can't their friends become my friend...my hero. I can propagate the program to their profile, can't I. If someone views my profile and gets this program added to their profile, that means anyone who views THEIR profile also adds me as a friend and hero, and then anyone who hits THOSE people's profiles add me as a friend and hero...

Do you see where this is going?

How many *friends* do you think Samy made? 100? 1000? 100000? Guess again. Let's put it this way, MySpace had to be shut down for a spell. Hilarious.

If you want the laugh of the week, go have a look at the article, I highly recommend it.