DDoS-Style YouTube Dislikes For Sale

An anonymous reader writes: Dell's Joe Stewart chronicles the tale of the YouTube channel that came under attack in the form of an avalanche of 'dislikes' for any videos that touched upon a certain company or even which examined themes around the company's product without mentioning it. The number of dislikes was so disproportionate to the casual number of viewers for the channel, and so concentrated as to constitute a particular type of net-attack — one that appeared to originate in Vietnam. Stewart eschews the notion of a "cottage industry" of Vietnamese YouTube "dislikers" in favor of the fact that any network exploits are eminently reproducible in a country which has only five ISPs among nearly ninety million people — and a widely distributed vulnerable router.

Comments

Re:people pay attention to likes on youtube?

[Anonymous Coward]

Likes and dislikes alter youtube's video sorting algorithms. A pile of dislikes may be enough to bury a video under irrelevant search results.