WordPress 2.0 Themes Competition Website got hacked – HOW?? Is there a security vulnerability in WordPress? Was the theme competition itself a hoax?

7 Comments

1. CountZero says:

   March 11, 2006 at 5:11 pm

   well, I was hesitant to believe the competition page was a hoax for quite a long time, but I must admit that Justin obviously lacked of any courage to try anything to recover the lost posts, so those who pointed to the hoax direction may have had a point.

   but, here are some facts I can’t understand regarding this case:
   - there wasn’t any advertising on the competition blog, at least none that slipped through my adblock configuration, and adwords would have slipped through – so Justin didn’t seem to earn any money on this blog.
   - granted, the prices were really pretty and this was one of the main eyecatchers for me to contribute my theme to that competition at all, but presumably never anybody checked the sponsors Justin has mentioned whether it was true that they sponsored the competition, when we assume the page was a scam, otherwise that would have been brought to daylight, right? Here we’d now have to ask “why didn’t anybody check back?” I can’t imagine that nobody would’ve checked back on a competition worth plenty of dollars.
   - It is now for several hours that the competition blog is completely wiped out and delivers 404s only – if that competition had been a scam with the purpose of gathering PR – a) the highest PR laid on distinct posts, not on the main page, b) an empty page returning only 404s doesn’t earn any money, and c) Justin’s personal blog has been killed as well, seemingly.

   So where is the point that I am missing, when this competition should really have been an extraordinary scam? I can’t see any true and durable advantages Justin would have been able to achieve with it. The submitted themes are each and every open source under GPL, MIT, CC and so on, so he can’t even sell them!

   Okay, enough for the rant. Just my two cents, and I apologize for my bad english; it’s late after midnight (about 0215) here in Germany now
2. Scott says:

   March 12, 2006 at 5:28 pm

   This whole WordPress theme fiasco is beyond my comprehension. I just can’t rationalize why someone would “con” people this way. I see opportunity, sure, but not motive. What’s the benefit?

   Anyhow, I see that there’s another competition over at wordpressarena.com, but just not sure if I should bother. Sigh.
3. Emily from How to Blog says:

   March 13, 2006 at 12:16 pm

   Yes, it is sickening and absurd — perhaps Justin thought the community would buy his explanation of the site being hacked and not ask questions — allowing him to leave the site up and use the pagerank to later change the site to something monetized, and once exposed eventually took the site down. There’s no real way to know.

   At this point, we have to focus on the positive — that competition inspired many theme designers to create what I image are some pretty amazing new WordPress 2.0 specific themes — now we just have to get those themes into the WordPress Arena competition and have them made available to the WP community so that their efforts were not for nothing.

   Those who submitted their themes to this hoax competition, I understand how frustrated and violated you must feel — what Justin did is beyond unacceptable. Make sure he doesn’t have the chance to now try and sell your themes — get them out there to the wordpress community under the open source licenses they were created with so that if anyone spots him trying to pass of one of your themes as his own he can be held accountable for it.

   And get them out there to the community so that they can be lovingly applied to the many WordPress 2.0 blogs that are eager to admire your work
4. CountZero says:

   March 13, 2006 at 2:03 pm

   Emily,

   you are totally true. It’d be a shame if this coward would get away with it. Ah, just before I forget: you know, my Binary Blue theme is WP 2.0 only and reached (thanx to the hoax competition where I submitted it) v1.0.1 in the meantime. Just as info for your new WP 2.0 specific list (I love the current list with more than 600 entries – it was a great start when I started blogging the days ago)
5. Christine says:

   March 14, 2006 at 11:39 pm

   I don’t understand how anyone could take the competition seriously when the person running the site couldn’t even write a coherent sentence. I suspected something right off the bat.

   Just my 2 cents.
6. Emily from How to Blog says:

   March 15, 2006 at 9:40 am

   @Christine -Very good point. I had the same concerns myself, but thought it could be because he is not a native english speaker and was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt… So much for that!!

   @CountZero – thanks for the heads-up (hey, at least something positive came out of the hoax competition — improvements to your theme!) I’ve updated the theme list to reflect that it is no longer in beta and requires WP 2.0+. The theme list is now up to 695 themes! Can’t wait to cross the 700 mark! (Will probably do so today – I’m sure I can find 5 more themes around the blogosphere if I dig hard enough..) Glad the list is of use to you! Keep up the great theme development!!!
7. nancy_hawkeye says:

   May 9, 2006 at 4:43 pm

   Here’s a comment made by kcyap (justin) in this website:
   http://www.mistyeiz.com/2006/04/16/i-want-to-pengsan-dying-of-hunger/
   ” 4. Hi Yvy, its been ages since i last chat with you keke. Now i work for http://www.i-phone.org and writes blog for them which is http://www.2dayblog.com. Im been appointed as tech blogger. hehehe so happy
   Comment by kcyap — April 16, 2006 @ 12:26 pm”
   …..So, kcyap is now working for http://www.i-phone.org. Those of you who were hoaxed by him can write to his current boss whose email address is sales@i-phonenetwork.org so that his boss may consider taking some action against him.