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December 01, 2008, 03:42 PM ET
Revenge of the Nerds: Hackers Give Victoria's Secret Campaign a Virtual Wedgie
It could be a scene out of “Revenge of the Nerds: The Next Next Generation.”
Computer geeks at universities around the country compete to sabotage a Victoria’s Secret contest that is being promoted—on some of the campuses—by sorority members via Facebook.
At Drexel University and a handful of other colleges, students created computer scripts to sway the contest—an online vote to nominate a university to receive its own clothing line—in their campuses’ favor.
Tim Plunkett, a junior at Drexel, created a script that could cast 1,500 votes per second, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian, the University of Pennsylvania’s independent student newspaper. Mr. Plunkett wrote the script in about three minutes and ran it on 30 different computers over 12 hours. The voting bot lifted the private university, with an undergraduate enrollment of more than 13,000 students, into first place with 5.2 million votes.
Thirty-one universities have their own PINK Collegiate Collection clothing lines, which hit stores in July and feature college logos on Victoria’s Secret T-shirts, sweatshirts, and underwear.
“We thought it was amusing to see the reaction of the people in the group [on Facebook], which were primarily sorority girls,” Mr. Plunkett told The Triangle, the student newspaper at Drexel.
Students at the contest’s other top four colleges—Texas Tech University (second), George Mason University (third), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (fourth)—all created similar scripts.
Officials from Victoria’s Secret could not be reached on Monday but the company’s Web site offers this warning:
“Tech schools, we’re watching your votes. And we’re on to you. Don’t be surprised if PINK shows up at your school.” —David DeBolt
Categories: Student-Life
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