Go HMC!
(Prologue: Saying that Mudd is hard is like saying there are a few atoms in the universe. It kicked my ass, my ego and my self esteem in ways that are difficult and painful to describe. That said, the following is also true)
I went to Harvey Mudd. I friggin' love that place sometimes. Case in point:
First, Victoria's Secret decided to release some college branded clothing. So they are running this campaign. Cute eh? But wait, look a little closer. HMC is #1... by a lot. And the following schools? What is Bob Jones University? And The Evergreen College.... huh?
Oh... HMC is #1 and 2-7 spell WIBSTR. Ha! But why you may ask? I mean, it's a school of 700 students with like 250 girls. Why care? Well, mostly because of this warning issued last time the contest was run. “Tech schools, we’re watching your votes. And we’re on to you. Don’t be surprised if PINK shows up at your school.” -David DeBolt
Victoria's Secret created security measures this time around... one vote per computer per day. They used cookies and capchas. Hey! An opportunity to prank!! First, a little script was written that allowed you to vote more than once... specifically, to just go type a capcha, and when you hit enter a new one would pop up, letting you vote again immediately. Slick huh? And really, in 10 minutes hundreds of votes could be cast. That's slick. Then a bot was developed that used vision algorithms to solve the capchas automatically. You'll see where that kicked in below.
Today I was sent this article, from CMC. Where not only do they call this stunt 'brilliant shenanigans', but they post the following graph saying "Because it isn’t enough to prank someone, you should always provide them with a spreadsheet and chart so that they can intricately model the depths of their ownage."
In the end, I highly doubt that Victoria's Secret will make anything with Harvey Mudd on it, now or ever, but I'm so entertained that I don't care. Besides, I think the real moral of the story is that VS needs to hire Mudders in the future to do security on their publicity stunts, espeiclaly if they want to warn other tech schools.
I went to Harvey Mudd. I friggin' love that place sometimes. Case in point:
First, Victoria's Secret decided to release some college branded clothing. So they are running this campaign. Cute eh? But wait, look a little closer. HMC is #1... by a lot. And the following schools? What is Bob Jones University? And The Evergreen College.... huh?
Oh... HMC is #1 and 2-7 spell WIBSTR. Ha! But why you may ask? I mean, it's a school of 700 students with like 250 girls. Why care? Well, mostly because of this warning issued last time the contest was run. “Tech schools, we’re watching your votes. And we’re on to you. Don’t be surprised if PINK shows up at your school.” -David DeBolt
Victoria's Secret created security measures this time around... one vote per computer per day. They used cookies and capchas. Hey! An opportunity to prank!! First, a little script was written that allowed you to vote more than once... specifically, to just go type a capcha, and when you hit enter a new one would pop up, letting you vote again immediately. Slick huh? And really, in 10 minutes hundreds of votes could be cast. That's slick. Then a bot was developed that used vision algorithms to solve the capchas automatically. You'll see where that kicked in below.
Today I was sent this article, from CMC. Where not only do they call this stunt 'brilliant shenanigans', but they post the following graph saying "Because it isn’t enough to prank someone, you should always provide them with a spreadsheet and chart so that they can intricately model the depths of their ownage."
In the end, I highly doubt that Victoria's Secret will make anything with Harvey Mudd on it, now or ever, but I'm so entertained that I don't care. Besides, I think the real moral of the story is that VS needs to hire Mudders in the future to do security on their publicity stunts, espeiclaly if they want to warn other tech schools.