TMZ Music: MySpace HACKED!

MySpace has been touted as almost a Messiah to the music industry over the past year, allowing people the ability to share their favorite artists with friends, listen to bands they love and discover new bands that they may never have heard before.

Green Tea Monkeys

Green Tea Monkeys, an indie ska/punk/reggae band from Germany, hoped to tap into MySpace's potential to achieve the success of other once no-name bands like Hawthorn Heights, Hollywood Undead and even Jack White's new baby The Raconteurs -- all were able to capitalize on the social networking site in their rise to prominence.



But what they never thought they would have to do is apologize to their entire fan base for unauthorized racist bulletins post under the band's name. "For us as a little band, it's worse when our fans won't believe in us ... to have to show people that we're not talking sh*t and that they can still believe and trust in what we're saying" they say.

Over the past couple of months, a rash of hacking has taken over MySpace, the most popular Web site since, well, the Web. The scale of the hacks has the MySpace community up in arms and is prompting people to ask when MySpace is going to step up.

The hacks are occurring through the bulletin section of each individual's MySpace profile. The extent of the hack is unknown, but as any MySpace user can tell you, in order to post a bulletin -- whether real or counterfeit - you must have access to an individual's account. That suggests that any and all information that a person has stored within their profile, including personal e-mail addresses, passwords, and e-mails, could be accessible to hackers.

Bunner on MySpace.comThe counterfeit bulletins causing the biggest uproar are those containing defamatory racial remarks that would make the grand wizard of the KKK blush. It appears that the three most common racist posts are: "I'm Gonna Kill Y'all Ni**as," "F*ck All Y'all Ni**as!," and "Get Out of America You F*ckin Ni**as!"

Each of these appears in the bulletin section -- with the user's name attached as the author of the bulletin. That means that every single one of the user's "friends" receives this information in connection with the owner of the account, who is listed as the author. Horror stories run rampant about the extent to which people have had to defend their character under these circumstances.

There's no way to measure how long the racist impressions will resonate before users have the ability to apologize and set the record straight. But then should MySpace users have to apologize for something like this in the first place?

TMZ attempted to contact MySpace for comment. We were not successful.

Filed under: Music

Reader Comments

(Page 1 of 20) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Most Recent | Next 15 Comments

1. hi tmz i have been seeing things goin wrong for a while and i think when they taget the celebrities it gets really bad but for the main users its awful and all types of things go wrong on our sites thing that scares me is i was goin to make another site didicated towards our troops and showin how much of our pressident is literally a shit hed lol............well i dunno if i realize anything else goin on ill let you guys know thanx for being great........... im goin to post ur letter on myspace

Posted at 10:32AM on Jul 16th 2006 by shanah

2. The hacking happened to me too, though not as bad. For me it was a bulletin or message sent out advertising some adult site. Thank goodness it wasnt anything worse.

Posted at 12:00PM on Jul 16th 2006 by Mistress Rage

3. Oh my god. That monkey band is sooo awful. Like a really bad Chilli Peppers impersonation. Buy a metronome for goodness sake...........or even a watch if you want to understand time!

Posted at 12:11PM on Jul 16th 2006 by jo

4. Man I am so tired of these Hackers my space has been messed with to. You know what tho keep your heads up and those of us that love you will be there and spread the good things about you. Stay tough and keep up the grat music Sherri I will post your letter on my space to Peace out

Posted at 1:04PM on Jul 16th 2006 by hotsweetsherri

5. I posted and will put your letter on my space keep on rockin

Posted at 1:06PM on Jul 16th 2006 by hotsweetsherri

6. This exploit for data mining MySpace Bullitins will be presented at BlackHat in a couple of weeks.

http://lists.grok.org.uk/pipermail/full-disclosure/2006-June/047579.html

MySpace also just hired a Security Chief, but it appears he does not have a grip on things yet.

Also, MySpace was the site of the fastest spreading Internet worm, the famous "Samy is my Hero" javascript crosssite scripting worm:

Posted at 1:11PM on Jul 16th 2006 by johnD

7. Keep on Rockin and F--k the talkin Hotsweetsherri

Posted at 1:31PM on Jul 16th 2006 by hotsweetsherri

8. I hate MySpace. Every time you turn around, there's a problem either with the site itself or media surrounding the site. I have seriously considered pulling my account, and I probably will.

Posted at 1:45PM on Jul 16th 2006 by boo

9. That's why band members and other MySpace users should monitor their account more. Once there is a post, and ya know ya didn't post it, you have the power to delete it.
It's part of the responsibility you have if you want to keep a good name, especially if you're doing this to get fame.

Posted at 2:07PM on Jul 16th 2006 by G

10. one of my friends who has depression when she first joined believe some of the fakes and it dealt with the depression and her wanting to contact her favorite celebs and then she noticed all the fakes on their and she is now so determined to take down all the fakes on myspace. and her depression is much better. and i back in her trying to take down the fakes. she tries to contact the celebs people or anything she can do to gget those delete. myspace should really check these "celebs" and be able to prove them before they join

Posted at 2:26PM on Jul 16th 2006 by angels

11. Some of the bands on there have nothing to do with their own sites. I wish they would moniter more because sooner or later popel get the drift that so and so isn't really promoting himself he paid some guy to update his site and right letter to fans.

Its all just a cleaver tactic to get more fans.

Posted at 2:34PM on Jul 16th 2006 by Me

12. I think this whole thing is blown WAY out of proportion. So what if some hackers are having fun with some people on an overrated social website? Worse things are happening in this world today regarding racism and social injustice; why should MySpace.com receive all the publicity and outrage? Worry about racial cleansing in the MidEast and Africa if you want to jump on a social bandwagon, don't freak out because someone said "ni****" on an entertainment site! I'm not a radical activist or anything like that; I just think that it's pathetic that people would go on and on about tabloid entertainment being corrupted when there are better topics to focus on if you need a reason to cry.

Posted at 2:54PM on Jul 16th 2006 by Bunnycake

13. In response to Bunnycake-It doesn't really matter where the racisicm is occuring whether it is on the entertainment scale or local hometown, IT IS STILL WRONG!!!
Although I am not African-American I underdstand that it is not the color of the person that has wrong anyone it is the "actual person themselves". Everyone has faults but there is no sense in downing anyone for it-People make mistakes & hopefully learn from them those who don't will continue to to fail in life at whatever they don't fix-That is a personal situation.
We have other things in the world to worry about than the color of someone's skin-WE HAVE HUNGRY KIDS RIGHT HERE IN THE GOOD OLE' USA TOO!!!!!!

Posted at 3:18PM on Jul 16th 2006 by mercedes

14. Thank you for your comments bunnycake. Well put.

Posted at 3:18PM on Jul 16th 2006 by urban shaman

15. Just as Winamp turned to crap when AOL bought Nullsoft, MySpace will only get worse now that Fox News owns it. The question is how much worse can it get?

Web pages consisting of hot pink, teal and yellow were already bad enough. Now that hackers, viruses, and "your space" full of ads are becoming more common who in their right mind is going to use it? Oh that's right... pedophiles still love it, they are probably myspace's most loyal user base.

Posted at 3:57PM on Jul 16th 2006 by Mark

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Most Recent | Next 15 Comments

Hot Tips

Email Alerts