While on the surface, this may not seem to be about security, but that’s exactly what it’s about. The Time.com poll for the world’s most influential person is legitimate. The interesting part is that the poll was hacked to allow him to win. This may be seen as a prank by some nerdy kids with too much time and some decent knowledge on their hands to make a name for themselves, that’s exactly what it is and isn’t.
You may not know moot is, but you are probably aware of some of the antics and feats of his site’s users (4Chan). While I could name some of the things they have done, that would be breaking the rules (#1 and #2), so I’ll mention some that have reached mainstream media. A group called Anonymous began waging a war upon the Church of Scientology, which, until then, was virtually impossible to do and win. They staged protests with Guy Fawkes masks at CoS sites around the US, they successfully defeated the DMCA takedown notices the church’s lawyers had been so successful at regarding anything that could be perceived as bad press on the net, and they enabled ex-members who were too afraid of the Church to come out and speak of their experiences in public. Some other campaigns and antics that have shown just how influential moot’s site has become includes slipping fake news onto national broadcasts, having Oprah say a meme unwittingly on her show, and…hacking the Time.com poll.
Just think about the things you don’t know about and the significance of how much power moot has and can, if provoked, threaten the security of the most complex security systems. More after the jump.
