Malcor Is A Fake

Posted by Stretch | Filed under Blogs

So the other day, I posted about a windows fanboy attacking Apple related sites. Well, its a fake. It was a big PR stunt for MacHeist II. Not only did Phill Ryu make a bad judgement call, so did the owners of three websites. MacApper, Glenn Wolsey, and AppleMatters all took part in Ryu’s stunt.

Each owner was contacted and agreed to help Macheist and Ryu to promote Macheist II. They put up the supplied “hacked” site for 24 hours, then switched back to their normal sites, stating things like:

Yes - I was indeed hacked yesterday. I didn’t expect it to stir up so much conversation in the community. The Digg homepage piece contains over 450 comments, a number which is very rarely achieved on an Apple related Digg piece.
I’d like to quickly thank all the people who have sent me emails offering words of kindness, my designer Andreas Lengyel, and the great guys at my host, Media Temple for their excellent support and precautionary measures over the past 48 hours.

from Glenn Wolsey

The problem is that the exploit appears to be unknown to Wordpress as far as I can see (I will be reporting it to them), so other Wordpress blogs may be susceptible. I wish I could offer more help. I’ll try to post more as we pour through the logs.

from MacApper

So now people are assuming that Wordpress is easily hackable, and are wondering why Media Temple couldn’t get their hosted websites back under their owners control. To top it off, Macheist still thinks its a big joke.

It’s too bad that it spiralled so far out of control because it would’ve been a great way to lead off this year’s festivities, which are about to start very soon. As you know, we always try our hardest to come up with cool missions and we thought it’d be great to have mission 1 have a rogue hacker that was running rampant that you heisters would put a stop to. But then things got a bit crazy and beyond our control, unfortunately.

We really hope that the people behind the “hacked” sites, their hosting compaines, and the companies that create their content management systems aren’t looked upon negatively by you all. The intent of everyone wasn’t malicious but just to have some fun.

Yeah, it would be great to bring a ton of bad publicity to Wordpress, Media Temple, and the Expression Engine that hosts AppleMatters. Glenn, and Hadley are the only ones that seem to be truely sorry about the whole thing.

But what can you expect from Phill Ryu? He’s pretty good at taking good ideas and destroying them. First ResExcellence, and now MacHeist.

Instead of participating in MacHeist II, do the developers a favor, and buy the software directly from them.

Permalink | November 28th, 2007

9 Responses to “Malcor Is A Fake”

  1. MHC Says:
    November 28th, 2007 at 4:03 pm

    This is an awesome post, Phil! Hope it makes the rounds!

  2. Stretch Says:
    November 28th, 2007 at 4:06 pm

    Thanks D.

  3. Boycott Mac Heist. It really is that simple. - Someone Else Says:
    November 29th, 2007 at 12:16 pm

    [...] I'm sure we won't be the only ones with something to say. Inside stretch posts about how MacHeist seems to think its all a big joke and Robinadr's blog notes how sad it is that any of the people concerned couldn't seem to [...]

  4. Close the Safe Says:
    November 29th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

    I’m having a little fun posting MacHeist haikus about thios whole mess over at http://www.macheistboycott.com (also linkde to by closethesafe.com). Enjoy!

  5. MHC Says:
    December 3rd, 2007 at 12:52 pm

    It seems MacHeist is gonna have competition! :mrgreen:

    MacUpdate Promo

    MacSanta <- server seems to be down at the moment though…

  6. Stretch Says:
    December 3rd, 2007 at 2:41 pm

    Macupdate worked with MacHeist this past July though, so I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Their bundle doesn’t interest me this time though.

  7. Dave Carmean Says:
    December 6th, 2007 at 4:38 pm

    Your links to their websites validates their quest for publicity and increased traffic- please remove them. Thanks for your information.

  8. Alfred Wong Says:
    December 7th, 2007 at 6:53 pm

    Seriously ask Steve Jobs to kick those evil little bastards’ asses

  9. Stretch Says:
    December 14th, 2007 at 10:36 pm

    Removing my links is hardly going to help, there is plenty of links to them on other websites such as Digg.

    Although see Jobs kick Phill’s ass would be well worth watching, I doubt it is gonna happen.