A Revolution is the Solution
Wow, what a rant, BUT a rant that is needed to be put out into the mainstream.
If no one stands up to this and comes forward to aplogise then those who posted nine days later do not deserves to post at all in this industry. It's independent researchers like Chris and others who do the work and then get the lack of "thanks" while mainstream blogs jump at the chance to gain traffic and then benefits from reporting. Thus coming accross as a "best ever researcher" from someone elses back.
Those should be ashamed if themselfs.
I see this going the same way in which rogues and removal guides get reported. The more they come, the more rogue sites and the likes of Enigma crosslink to each other in order to dump the legit and free removal support forums down the pecking order in the search engines to gain a few bob. Or to gain the credit.
/Rant Over...
This is one of the best pieces of controlled aggression I have ever seen. Well said.
How Roger Thompson has the audacity to clearly claim the credit for someone else hard work is beyond me, and the fact that the news sites never noticed the discrepancies is also astonishing, it really makes you question the validness of their articles/stories.
I do hope this matter is resolved amicably by the parties involved and the proper credit is given to Paperghost, who quite clearly deserves it!
I am sorry to read what has happened Paperghost, and I praise you for tackling this problem head on.
Well this is illuminating.
Thats an interesting mea culpa - however, would it have appeared if not for this post? or would they have continued to be interviewed - with a credit for facetime on the tip of their tongue, of course - and not said anything, as per this SC piece from not so long ago?
http://www.scmagazineus.com/MySp.../article/96313/
saying sorry is easy once you've been pulled on something.
Well shit, it only took the story to be syndicated on 50+ international news websites before they suddenly remembered someone else found it, dont be too harsh 
http://news.google.com/news?hl=e...57447&
scoring=d
way to go pg.
Even with the apology, this still fucking stinks. I mean, damage is done, right? For a company to take so much care about crediting the right people, they sure made a great big fuckup of that one.
but hey, its okay, full credit to chris boyd now that.....every single website on the planet says that other guys company discovered it.
whatever.
I just saw this on his comments, and I think its a disgraceful thing to have said.
Look, the _really interesting_ bit about this was the fact that it was Alicia Keys page that was hacked, not how the redirect was done. No one cares about the Dykeenies page (sorry Dykeenies), and no one but the geekiest cares about how the href worked, but Alicia has 250k "friends" on MySpace. If Chris mentioned Alicia Keys, I sure didn't know about it. If I did,I wouldn't have done the vid. As I've said before, as I was making the vid, I remembered someone talking about MySpace hacks in some closed security mailing lists, and _that_ was Alex, _not_ Chris. And it was _not_ Alicia Keys.
I replied with this:
Well, that pretty much shows where your interest lies then - the huge press splash and units sold because "alicia keys" was hacked. The real victims here are the bands using myspace and thrown to the wolves because all myspace cares about is filthy rich musicians.
my friend has a band on myspace - or should i say, HAD a band on myspace because once their band page was hacked, they had no means to get everything back, myspace refused to reinstate and they lost everything. It was easier to break up than keep going.
so for you to say "well no one cares about (remove Dykeenies and insert all the smaller bands who actually make use of myspace) in favour of someone who has probably never even seen her own myspace page.....is rather insulting.
Haven't you seen the bands crying out for help, and yelling at myspace because they're wiping them out every five seconds?
Youre right, nobody cares about the redirect. but id say nobody much cares about alicia keys, other than the journalists caught in the press wave, either.
the BIG deal here is that someone was targetting band bages systematically as a method to infect people. not catching the odd one via a phish, but actually targetting the bands on a grand scale. thats what boyd figured out, and that (if you read his original blog and comments to PC World) are what was at the heart of the initial find.
now all i can see is "alicia keys", and nobody cares about the bands that were actually affected much. Your own comments regarding the dykeenies (and by extension all the other bands out there without a multimillion dollar deal) prove that.
he seems to be blaming - or at least using - alex ekelberry as some sort of get out clause.
"I remembered someone talking about MySpace hacks in some closed security mailing lists, and _that_ was Alex, _not_ Chris. And it was _not_ Alicia Keys."
As I just mentioned on his blog - lets see if THAT gets published - I'm on all the private mail lists, and the only thing I saw Alex E mention regarding Myspace hacks recently was the one involving a fake "windows update" box that overlayed the pages and had *nothing* to do with the myspace band hacks.
Not one person had mentioned the band hacks up to the point where chris found it, OR afterwards until he sent an email about it on one of them a few days ago.
Well actually in Rogers defence, upon checking through a bunch of unopened emails from the past few weeks from the various groups I'm signed up to, there is indeed an email from alex on the 26th or 27th (i think) of october, where he'd come across a hacked band and asked if there were any Myspace people on the list to get the page cleaned up. Note the email wasn't addressed to anyone specifically, it was just to the whole list - but that doesn't mean they didn't talk offlist afterwards assuming he was on the same distribution group.
however, this being the case, shouldn't Sunbelt had been given some sort of mention in their blog / video too? I realise you can't mention everyone, but if they truly did find a hacked band page independently of our research (but based on a finding from Sunbelt) then should they not be credited, or at least given a passing mention as well?
Meh.
Even accounting for the "apology" I still dont really like this much. I mailed a bunch of reporters who wrote about this already.
as for those other guys, they didnt update their original blog, they didnt change their video - but now that theyre aware of this, shouldnt they have done something along those lines by now? an apology is nice, but you werent after an apology, you were after a credit - which to me seems entirely fair.
I wouldn't bother, to be honest. If you wanna do something productive about this, email myspace and yell at them till they fix the problem. Let me worry about the other stuff.
WOW! Your technical knowledge is so far beyond me, it's not even worth my time to try to explain it to you. I do appreciate a fascinating, and informative read, however.
I have a MySpace page, but rarely use it, and I sure am glad that I am not a musician with a MySpace..lol Have to wonder if MySpace ever really fixes anything?
Hi, we (3 Pups Music, a band/self publisher/self production company) had our Myspace band profile hacked 12-28 to send out comments from our account with some kind of come-on about "what about that party and the nudie girls" or something similar. Reported it to Myspace, no reply so far. Changed password right away. Any tips or guidance you can offer me? Thanks for the blogs. Newbie Brad
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