As some members of the community pointed out, last Saturday, we saw a sudden surge in voting percentage for one of the logos up for public vote (see comments here). After some investigation, turns out some people had written scripts to register a large number of votes on the same IP addresses. As one of the readers Aestros said: “Who ever is that [person] is, he is so stupid. I mean, whatās the purpose ? […] [The point]Ā wasnāt to beat the previous entry, it was to contribute to the community effort”.
The culprits are
IP Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā #Votes
66.232.100.247 Ā Ā Ā Ā 1365
66.232.107.140 Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā 1155
x.x.x.x Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā 577 (see below)
87.106.215.227 Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā 435
204.128.27.8 Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā 167
One of the ip addresses not shown was for OSHW advocate Bill Porter. Concerned about the spike in voting, he tested the security of the voting system and reported the issue to Open Hardware Summit personally.
Since then, we’ve enabled security checks, and multiple voting is no longer possible. But that still leaves us with 3,122 faulty votes, which micropoll.com refuses to disqualify.
So we are going to do this manually on closing day (April 5th), and adjust for the surge due to cheating. In the meantime, if you are one of these IP addresses, and had good intentions, please comment below, and tell us who you voted for (we can see your IP in the comments). If you were ill-intentioned, and subsequently, will not fess up, SHAME ON YOU. It’s people like you that make the work of a hard working community so difficult, and frustrating.Ā But the community is stronger than you, and this is not going to stop everyone’s good efforts.
So go play bully somewhere else…
others, VOTING STILL OPEN TILL APRIL 5th: CAST YOUR VOTEĀ HERE
Thanks everyone for helping out..
Comments
22 responses to “Thanks for ruining a good thing, or TRYING to!”
If those people don’t fess up, I’d be interested to see the big blogs (Hack-a-day, make, etc) search for those ip’s in there post and comment databases. I bet we could find a match somewhere.
What would that accomplish? Shame?
Bill, hackers will be hackers. Welcome to the community. 1) Don’t use a cheap, spammy, free 3rd party hosted poll. 2) Have some sense and turn on security in the first place.
Hackaday.com etc should NOT give up anyone’s IP addresses.
To sum it up, you’re a complete retard with nothing better to do. Go kill yourself.
IP addresses have already been given up (above). And anyway, turns out the person used a proxy!
Maybe next time do a little reading before you troll?
[…] seems that there has been some shenanigans happening with the OSHW logo voting page as some are using scripts to game the system for their favorite design. Why? Who knows…Ā How? Well one of the advocates of OSHW [Bill Porter] set about figuring […]
Those IPs belong to kproxy. Port 80 is open on both of them. (http colon slash slash ip) Getting “big sites” to find the users will only yield inaccurate results.
Well, that explains the Whois info then. Also really suggests these people (or person) had evil intentions to cover up their tracks.
@Bill Porter:
Isn’t that a violation of peoples’ privacy?
What if some of those IPs are dynamic? You’re not necessarily going to find the correct person that way.
But I do agree: why would anyone game the system just to spam votes on a logo contest? That’s lame.
“Isnāt that a violation of peoplesā privacy?”
Legally, courts have decided both ways on that. Personally, I don’t believe it is.
If you called and left a message on a stranger’s answering machine, (if they have it) caller ID would log your phone number. If the person asked around to see if someone else got a call from the same number, would you consider that violation of people’s privacy?
I honestly have to say that the aggressive and derisive attitude of this post, along with the suggestion that the guilty parties be hunted down via their records on other sites, makes me lose quite a bit of respect for the open hardware summit.
To be clear, I have no affiliation with the open hardware summit. And I don’t feed trolls.
+1 for Jesse
I totally agree!
Also using a poll system which does not limit a vote to at least an IP address is very amateurish, imo it should be limited to an ip and an email address.
-10 for Jesse
I voted for 16-Golden Orb or something like that.
Maybe a contest is not so great an idea? I see 11 entries. That makes for one validated winner and 10 wastes of time diluting the value of good graphic design.
You realize that open source means you give away your designs *for free*, right? Zero compensation for your work.
I am now going to perform some testing on those IP addresses. If you would like my scan information, just send me an email.
[…] seems that there has been some shenanigans happening with the OSHW logo voting page as some are using scripts to game the system for their favorite design. Why? Who knows…Ā How? Well one of the advocates of OSHW [Bill Porter] set about figuring […]
What if the person admitted that they did it? What do you do then? Sounds like a waste of time. I can imagine much better uses of talent. Who cares if somebody hacked a voting system. Who cares if somebody finds the person who did it. Sounds like somebody wants to pick a fight because they’ve been had.
Well… until a system exists there will be an hacker (or a lamer) that tries to force that system.
This is in the spirit of hacking since the beginning of our technological history and this spirit (bad or good that it is) is the source of open source community and open hardware projects.
We are all hackers (or lamers).
Now… I really don’t understand why someone would be so stupid to cheat a voting machine just to have it’s logo selected!
I understand instead that if the system for voting you are using is hackable you cannot complain about what other people do with your system š
Go and fix it! Computers don’t need morality!
I know the voting system is not your system … cancel the votation and do it again with another system that is supposed to be bug free š
one ip can only vote every 6 hour.
what is so difficult to use a CAPTCHA.
there are tousend of good vote scripts out there
but why use this shitty one?
dont blame the ppl the fuck with the vote
blame the admin how made this posible