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Google Trends Hacked? “ǝlƃooƃ noʎ ʞɔnɟ” and “swastika”
13Jul2008 Filed under: Latest Buzz Author: Akshay JainIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I was just browsing through Google Trends (as I do on a regular basis) but this is the second time in the week that Google Trends is showing messed up results. This leads to speculation that this might be a successful hacking/spamming attempt which Google is unable to control.
Facts:
Here is the latest Google Trends result that occupies the number #1 position.
This was the basic result that caused me to blog about this.
The appearing of the “Swastika” on the Google Trends page a few days back further strenthens the “foul-play” angle in this whole story.
(Image courtesy: Techcrunch.com)
My Opinions:
1. The search trend of “ǝlƃooƃ noʎ ʞɔnɟ” shows that there were virtually “NO” google searches before today. So what happened today that this term is on the first page? I suspect that this could be because of one or more of the following reasons:
a. Most Likely: There is some snag in the “Google Trends” application by which the hackers have gained control and are manipulating the top results at their will. This is the least destructive option that I can think of.
b. Less likely but far more destructive: The group of hackers has managed to run a mass-search on the Google Search Engine without getting their computers flagged off as spam. This could happen if they are using a lot of “bot-nets” or “infected computers”. This further raises another security issue that a virus of such a scale is at large without the anti-virus companies even figuring what is happening.
This also means trouble for the Google Engineers because they “cannot” stop all the infected computers by putting a blanket ban on them because there are most likely normal users who even do not know what is happening.
An official word from Google is still awaited and the speculation is rife in the blogosphere till the official word comes.
UPDATE: That “ǝlƃooƃ noʎ ʞɔnɟ” is on the fourth spot right now. This is slightly intriguing because Google had pulled down the Swastika “manually” last time. I think they are not removing it completely because of the fact that they would not have to say that it was anything un-natural. It would be passed of as any normal incident.
24 Responses to “Google Trends Hacked? “ǝlƃooƃ noʎ ʞɔnɟ” and “swastika””
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yomoma
July 13th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
or ebaums world just got a bunch of people to type that into the search bar
ANon ymouz
July 13th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Hmmm.. interesting theories. You could be right!
OR
A group of basement-dwellers (hundreds or thousands of them) from ebaums world have nothing to do on their hands but search the term every ten seconds for the last 5 hours.
David
July 13th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I heard it was ebaumsworld kids thinking they were some kind of “hackers”
ANON
July 13th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Nice research /b/rother.
KEEP IT UP.
Mudkipz
July 13th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I think we can rest assured that ebaums world is to blame.
bauman
July 13th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
YOU CAN’T STOP US
love,
ebaumsworld.com
Shia LaBeouf
July 13th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
I think it was most likely ebaums world. There was something about this in their forums but I didn’t read it all and I can’t find it now
But basically from what I’ve heard and can make out, some of the forumers from ebaums world are getting a whole assload of their friends/family/pets etc just to repeatedly run this search.
Crude but effective, and pretty smart I guess from ebaums. I think they might be famous if they keep doing it.
Slow Poked
July 13th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
i dont believe ebaums had anything to do with this one, the swastika maybe, but not this. This is probably an inside job, my guess is that googles’ gonna keep quiet about this and let it die out, then some heads are gonna roll at google hq.
P.Bear
July 13th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I doubt ebaums could manage something like this.. I think this is from a larger, more intelligant group.
admin
July 13th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Everyone seems to point that this is “Ebaumsworld” behind this. But I would like to ask you, are they capapble of doing “MILLIONS” of searches? No matter how big a site it may be, I am quite sure that doing millions of searches “manually” is not an easy task.
I think there is some “automated process” behind this for sure.
Adminmoar
July 13th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
NO U, EBAUM WIN
David
July 13th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
No doubt, but those little cyber terrorists have more crap up their sleeves (in the way of scripts and whatnot) than Carter’s got back pills…..
They’re like little “hackers-on-steroids” just doing it for the lulz…
David Bear
July 13th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Cyber terrorists from Ebaum’s world have flexed their yellow-van muscles again! When will they get off the steroids? also, lol@ “manually” and “automated process”.
David
July 13th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I do believe this to be the work of Ebaums. Those terrorists are always up to something, whether it be hacking Google or posting child pornography somewhere, they are always up to something.
Chris P.
July 13th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Wow. And I thought it was impossible to hack Google. Guess there are some pretty wise people out there.
Frank
July 13th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
For anyone that doesn’t know, ebaumsworld culls content from other sites, and claims it as its own content. Nothing on ebaums is original content.
David
July 13th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
pretty sure its ebaums. i have been there for a while now and the people really dont have anything to do. I believe that they think they are some kind of an hero or something…
forgivenorforget
July 13th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
rules 1 and 2…. ebaums world… damn terrorists.
Astley R.
July 13th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
It has to be Ebaumsworld.com tbh, they’re such retarded sons of female dogs
David
July 13th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
They were saying they did for the lulz, whatever that means.
John
July 13th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
i traced these people who are doing this stupid thing.
****Snipped by admin, reason: Link not working****
now these people are searching for LOL.
apparently it is one of the most popular image boards around.
Tom
July 18th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Google hasn’t been hacked… it is quite manipulate-able because when people search they will almost never type the same as someone else what makes it hard to put a keyword on-top of a page but when “ebaumsworld” or “4chan” people got manipulated by the OP too search for that word every 30 seconds for 5 hours and the word is always the same google will easily put it up. Don’t forget that their are easily +1000 people looking at “ebaumsworld” or “4chan” at the same time.
mulciber
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:48 am
From an ex-”hacker”, all it takes is one hacker making a script and some ebaum’s world script kiddies running the damn thing. It isn’t that hard. Hell you could EASILY do it using cURL/fsockopen in PHP. Just make a loop, setup proxies and useragents in an array/linked list and use a rand number to call it. Contact the google, sending post variables in it. Hell, cURL will even handle the cookies! Fsockopen might require some creative programming to handle cookies. You could probably find a ready made script to load the cookie information into a session. –> spammed/header haxed!
/b/rainiac
August 7th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
ǝlƃooƃ noʎ ʞɔnɟ