Archive for the 'Hacks' Category

Faking Alexa traffic ranking


How much do you trust the Alexa traffic ranking? According to the official definition given by Alexa,

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach)

In other words, the pageviews are only accumulated provided the users have Alexa Toolbar installed in their browsers. That pretty much makes the ranking factor almost unreliable, in my opinion. How many of the web users out there actually install the toolbar, given the fact that it does not come with browser initially? For those who concern about privacy, they probably wouldn’t like the idea of letting Alexa track their browsing behaviour. That’s why I wasn’t convinced that the popular Digg.com was going to outperform Slashdot when someone posted the Alexa ranking of both. Both sites are for geeks, and geeks don’t install Alexa toolbar. End of story.

However, Alexa ranking means a lot to certain people and businesses. For example, a company looking for VC funding. A good Alexa ranking could make the site look good, and convince the VC that it’s a good investment. So I came across this story (in Chinese), and realized there is a new job title out there: Alexa ranking cheater.

Continue reading this at Techdigger.

MySpace hacked

A guy named Samy noticed a flaw in MySpace that doesn’t validate the user input. As a result, malicious javascript is allowed to pass through. Instead of reporting it to MySpace, he decided to make himself popular.

One of the features of MySpace lets you name your heroes. Samy wants to be everyone’s hero. So this is what his dirty script do: someone who views his profile would automatically add Samy as their friend and his name into their profile’s list of heroes. In addition to that, those victims will then carry the malicious javascript to infect others when their profiles are viewed are more people.
Continue reading ‘MySpace hacked’

NES Controller TV Remote

If you’ve got the time, here is yet another time waster for you. This guy shows you how to turn your old NES controller into a TV remote.

How good can can a 8-button remote be? Well, you tell me.

Link.