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Life & fun · March 23, 2012

AW

A Way To Hack HN's Karma

I submitted a link, when someone clicks on it I get an up-vote for this article. I don't want people to misuse this I just want to bring attention to this problem. This is the link I used that up-votes this: http://news.ycombinator.com/vote?for=3742742&dir=up&...

A Way To Hack HN's Karma launched on March 23, 2012 with 472 votes, #2 of 340 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches.

A Way To Hack HN's Karma alternativestop 1% of March 2012

In plain words

This post demonstrates a security vulnerability in Hacker News' voting system where a direct link can automatically cast an upvote when clicked. The creator discovered that submitting a crafted URL gives them an upvote whenever someone follows the link, potentially allowing manipulation of article rankings. Rather than exploiting the flaw, the maker chose to publicly disclose it to alert the platform's operators to the problem and prevent misuse by others.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

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