A Friendly MySpace Hack

An aquaintance of mine recently managed within 24 hours to become the most popular civilian on myspace with the help of a clever bit of viral javascript imbedded into his myspace page.

By the time myspace shut down their site for a few hours to investigate he had over 1 million requests from unknowing myspace members for him to be listed as their myspace friend. Not only that, but every single one of them had their "my heros" section appended with the phrase "but most of all, samy is my hero". Yes, my aquaintance used his own first name for this.

It took me two days to convince him to let me post his account.

Screenshots plus his story follow:

Let's see here...what would make my profile rock. Well, the most popular profiles on myspace pretty much consist of people with the limited english skills so I don't want to mimic those, but popularity begets popularity. I need some more friends. I need people to love me. I delved in 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 profile's list of heroes. I was ecstatic.

But it wasn't enough. I needed more. So I went deeper. A Chipotle burrito and 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... So if 5 people viewed my profile, that's 5 new friends. If 5 people viewed each of their profiles, that's 25 more new friends. And after that, well, that's when things get difficult. The math, I mean.

Some people would call this a worm. I call it popularity. Regardless, I don't care about popularity, but it can't hurt, right?

October 4th, 2005, 12:34 pm: You have 73 friends.
I decided to release my little popularity program. I'm going to be famous...among my friends.

1 hour later, 1:30 am: You have 73 friends and 1 friend request.
One of my friends' girlfriend looks at my profile. She's obviously checking me out. I approve her inadvertent friend request and go to bed grinning.

7 hours later, 8:35 am: You have 74 friends and 221 friend requests.
Woah. I did not expect this much. I'm surprised it even worked.. 200 people have been infected in 8 hours. That means I'll have 600 new friends added every day. Woah.

1 hour later, 9:30 am: You have 74 friends and 480 friend requests.
Oh wait, it's exponential, isn't it. Shit.

1 hour later, 10:30 am: You have 518 friends and 561 friend requests.
Oh crap. I'm getting messages from people pissed off that I'm their friend when they didn't add me. I'm also getting emails saying "Hey, how the hell did you get onto my myspace....not that I mind, you're hot". From guys. But more girls than guys. This actually isn't so bad. The girls part.

3 hours later, 1:30 pm: You have 2,503 friends and 6,373 friend requests.
I'm canceling my account. This has gotten out of control. People are messaging me saying they've reported me for "hacking" them due to my name being in their "heroes" list. Man, I rock. Back to my worries. People are also emailing me telling me their IM names so that I'll chat with them. Cool. Back to my worries. Apparently people are getting pissed because they delete me from their friends list, view someone else's page or even their own and get re-infected immediately with me. I rule. I hope no one sues me.

I haven't been worried about anything in years, but today I was actually afraid of the unknown. Afraid of myspace? No, afraid of FOX's legal department. If you're not aware already, myspace was purchased by FOX only a few weeks back for 580 million dollars. Not online myspace dollars, but actual cash that can buy strippers. With all that money, Tom from myspace could basically do 2 chicks at once, 580 times. Or he could have FOX come after me. I don't want FOX after me.

I spend the rest of the day working, trying to get the ideas of what could happen out of my head. I have my girlfriend visit me for lunch to say our goodbyes. I'm going to the big house. I could hear it then, "mr samy, you are hereby sentenced to an $800,000 fine and 3 years in jail for getting way too many friends on myspace and causing psychological damage to girls who thought they were your friends until you cancelled your account."

5 hours later, 6:20 pm: I timidly go to my profile to view the friend requests. 2,503 friends. 917,084 friend requests.
I refresh three seconds later. 918,268. I refresh three seconds later. 919,665 (screenshot below). A few minutes later, I refresh. 1,005,831.

It's official. I'm popular.

I have hit 1,000,000+ users. In less than 20 hours, I've hit over 1/35th of all myspace users. Every request is from a unique, living, and logged in user. I refresh once more and now see nothing but a message that my profile is down for maintenance. I messed up, didn't I. I'm now more afraid and decide I am never doing anything even near illegal ever again. To get my mind off of everything, I begin downloading a copy of the latest Nip/Tuck episode.

1 hour later, 7:05 pm: A friend tells me that they can't see their profile. Or anyone else's profile. Or any bulletin boards. Or any groups. Or their friends requests. Or their friends. Nothing on myspace works. Messages are everywhere stating that myspace is down for maintenance and that the entire myspace crew is there working on it. I ponder whether I should drive over to their office and apologize. Another attempt to free my mind of worry, I go back to watching some episodes of The OC which I downloaded a few days earlier. File sharing rocks.

2.5 hours later, 9:30 pm: I'm told that everything on myspace seems to be working again. My girlfriend's profile, along with many, many others, still say "samy is my hero", however the actual self-propagating program is gone. I'm relieved that it's back up as they can't claim damages for any downtime past this second if everything is in fact working properly.

10 minutes later, 9:40 pm: I haven't heard from anyone at myspace or FOX. A few minutes later, my girlfriend calls, I pick up, and she says to me, "you're my hero". I don't actually get it until about three hours later.

Postmortem:

I'm still waiting for myspace or FOX to contact me. I'm sorry myspace and FOX. I love you guys, all the great things myspace provides, and all the great shows FOX has, my favorite being Nip/Tuck.

Oh wait, Nip/Tuck is FX? My bad, but FOX, I'm sure you still have some good stuff. But maybe you should start picking up Nip/Tuck reruns? Just a thought. I'm kidding! Please don't arrest me.