Network Security News

Hacker claims credit for Amazon.com ranking error

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

A hacker with the handle Weev has claimed responsibility for de-ranking thousands of books on Amazon.com over the weekend, but the internet retailer yesterday denied the claims.

What was originally reported to be a system "glitch" caused more than 57,000 books, a large number of them in the genre of gay and lesbian literature and anthologies, to be dropped from the website's bestseller lists.

A spokeswoman for Amazon, Patty Smith, said that it was an "embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloguing error" that affected the rankings of 57,310 books, "in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine and Erotica."

Smith said the error affected not just sales rank but also removed the books from Amazon's main product search.

Mike Daisey, a former Amazon employee, reported on his blog that the error was caused by a programmer at Amazon.fr.

Weev, a hacker troll who has a knack for publicity - he was previously interviewed for a New York Times Magazine article that included his photograph - said on his LiveJournal blog that he disrupted the website using scripts and some developing-world labor to exploit Amazon's reputation system.

Another blogger said he attempted the hack described by Weev and reported that it didn't work.
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