• Folio, Thursday, April 23, 2009 9:33 AM

Time magazine felt the sting of hackers in this year's online poll of the top 100 most influential people. Taking advantage of an apparent lack of authentication or validation in the process, hackers used "autovoters" to inundate the poll with millions of fake votes. The bogus votes were cast for "moot," a pseudonym of Christopher Poole, operator of 4chan, an online message board.

"We took many preventative measures to maintain the integrity of the Time 100 poll, and moot has a passionate community of users who worked to influence the poll," says a Time rep. In addition to voting moot to the top of the list, the hackers apparently rearranged the top 21 names so that the first letter of their names-looking down the list-spelled out the phrase "Marblecake Also the Game."

Time editors traditionally include the person with the most votes online in the magazine's official list, which is to appear in the May 1 issue. Voting went live March 19 and closes April 28.

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