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.

Reader Comments

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271. fix it asap

Posted at 8:57PM on Aug 11th 2006 by diana

272. I had to make a new profile..my hacking wasnt anything bad..just annoying...bullitens were posting in my name..."I GOT A NEW RINGTONE!!"..."CHECK OUT THIS HOT CHICK!!!" etc. and they have links in them that just go to that page cannot be displayed message that you sometimes get with internet explorer.........i think i got hacked when i clicked on one of them that was supposedly posted by a friend of mine (but i found out later on that it wasnt) and then i opened the link

Posted at 7:15AM on Aug 12th 2006 by Amanda

273. I have a private account on Myspace where I must approve all comments and have all bands blocked. However, my account was STILL hacked because I clicked a link in a fake bulletin, which was for my own stupidity...but still terribly annoying to fix. All of this is to say that private accounts do NOT totally protect you.

Posted at 8:45AM on Aug 12th 2006 by Beth

274. I have been hacked....but the thing they put up was "A pic of me and my wife". I was like ok i didin't but that down and changed password.....who ever keeps doing this needs to stop! They need to get a life...

Posted at 11:35AM on Aug 12th 2006 by Rebekah

275. How can we stop This?? cause mine just got hacked into. and i dunno what to do.
do i change my passward or what?

Posted at 12:55PM on Aug 12th 2006 by CHelsea

276. I think this whole thing is crap. If people don't like what is going on or how things are being ran, don't join the site. Every single user on Myspace has the right to delete their account at any time. If it is that big of a deal, delete your account. Just because some stupid people have sent some cracked out bulletins, that doesn't mean we are in danger. If the people on your list are really "friends", you should know what bulletins they post and which ones they don't. And for those people that have like a million "friends", what is the point of that? That is just plain rediculous. How can you keep up with that? Stick to what is important, people. There are much more important things to worry about than these stupid little people sending prank bulletins.

Posted at 12:56AM on Aug 13th 2006 by Miss Behavin

277. My sisters profile was hacked, and 3 more of my friends were hacked. It is sad to me, because one must go through alot of unneeded BS to fix it back. My sister is a Christian, and the hacker put a picture of a penis as her profile back grounds, that had a smily face on it. Dick was definitly the only one smiling when she saw it......

Posted at 1:00AM on Aug 13th 2006 by Sarah

278. I WAS SO PISSED OFF!THERE WAS ALOT
OF STUFF POSTED I DIDN'T EVEN WRITE!IT
HAPPEN TO MY FRIEND TOO!!HE'S GAY SO
PUT SOME MEAN STUPID THINGS ABOUT HIM!!
I FEEL LIKE WE WERE BEING STALKED OR
SOMETHING!THE PEOPLE WHO DID THIS
MUST NOT HAVE MUCH OF A LIFE, AND
NEED TO GROW UP!DUMBASSES!

Posted at 2:07AM on Aug 13th 2006 by bECKY

279. My band myspace ( that i jus made tonight ) got hacked and now its deleted. I changed my password for my real site above. I cant loginto my band mysace, it takes me rite back to the home page. I talked to a friend and she said that thats happend to her b4 and her page got deleted.

Posted at 4:17AM on Aug 13th 2006 by Beth

280. ok so what I've noticed is the bullitons all my friends have been posting for ringtones and stuff and when i asked what the hell they were doing they said they had nothing to do with it

Posted at 2:42PM on Aug 13th 2006 by shelby

281. My account has been hacked into once. I had Bulletins posted about "Free Ringtones" and sex ad's under my name. I think someone should do something about it soon. I did do something for myself by changing my password and deleting all those phony bulletins.

Posted at 10:15PM on Aug 13th 2006 by Josh

282. oh my goodness.. i wish i found this out 2 days ago! yesterdya i became a victim of it! at least now i know that there are fake bulletins out there now.. but mine werent really the racist kind.. mine was "wow! look what my boo got for me!"

im glad my friends knew i dont EVER say "boo"

Posted at 12:02PM on Aug 14th 2006 by sally

283. I agree with Bunnycakes. There is so many other racial problems in the world, that actually matter. But a couple of incidents with Myspace makes people pay more attention to that. Then the actual world. Racism, prejudice, hacking etc, is pretty much wrong. But get a reality check if Myspace is all you worry about....


Posted at 5:44PM on Aug 14th 2006 by Samantha

284. No one seems to remember exactly how this "hack" supposedly worked. It wasn't a "hack" at all. Being as how I opened one of these bulletins and WASN'T fooled by it. The best way not to be fooled by it is to understand it. So, let me explain how it worked.
You open the bulletin. The minute the page loads a script was activated that forwards you to another page. One that APPEARS to be the myspace "re-login" page. But under closer examination... it isn't. It's basically an account information phish. You could enter ANYTHING into the prompt and all it does is forward you to your actual home page, just like if you really logged in. The so called "hack" is actually a person or program that connects to your account using the information YOU gave to login and repost the bulletin. While logged in, the amount of things that can be done to your page is virtually limitless. I've seen everything from basic malice (deleting everything on someone's page) to code being added that installs malware to anyone who views your page. I know it's asking alot... but people just need to start being more cautious with their accounts. If you are EVER forwarded to a re-login page unintentionally, try clicking the home page link or retyping "myspace.com" into your browser prompt. If you are actually logged on, you'll know that you've avoided being phished.
Also... DO NOT INSTALL ANY CODE ONTO YOUR SITE WITHOUT KNOWING EXACTLY WHAT THEY DO. Doing things like installing trackers (which don't work) or other complicated codes ignorantly leaves you open to your site being manipulation from outside entities.
Lastly, if you see anything suspicious, immediately report it to MySpace. If it's happening to you it's probably happening to alot of other people. But myspace won't take it seriously until they know enough people have been affected to consider it real problem. Enough people reported the false prompt forward to myspace and they reacted by adding a notice to the page that asks people to look at the url before they give their information (since most of those fake forwards have obviously fake urls).
The best way to avoid this kind of thing is to IGNORE certain types of bulletins and just pay attention to what's going on. And, if you believe your login information has been compromised... CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD IMMEDIATELY. Remember, they can't mess with your page if they can't get into it. It's just common sense people.

Posted at 1:45AM on Aug 15th 2006 by Daemon

285. It seems a number of these exploits are ground-level phishing attacks. Someone got your password at some point by tricking you into logging in on a fake page that looks like MySpace. You can solve the problem by adding www.myspace.com or your own myspace profile to your Favorites list, and only ever logging in through there. To end the exploit, you only need change your password.

I got interested in this topic when a friend became plagued with advertisements posting as bulletins.

Posted at 2:46AM on Sep 4th 2006 by DRybes

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