Hijacked Orkut Guy on the prowl

Anonymous hacker took over 5,500 communities in a day on the social networking website

He came. He saw. And he hijacked. Not ships or planes but around 5,500 popular Internet communities from Google's social networking site Orkut within 24 hours. Most of these communities were from India.

Calling himself the Orkut Guy, this online Robinhood, however, didn't hold the community members to ransom.

Instead, the hacker randomly redistributed the hijacked communities among Netizens and disappeared within a week of his first attack that was reported on February 27, when a complaint was spotted in Orkut's official Help Forum that a "medalled" administrator named Orkut Guy had taken over a few communities.

But what scares security experts is that Orkut members share a large amount of personal and professional information on the portal and that may be misused by this anonymous hacker.

Supriya Tyagi, an aeronautical engineering student from Delhi, the promoter of the buzzing site Orkut Underground (OUG), is still shocked at the Orkut Guy's audacity and dexterity at cracking communities. His was the first community to be hijacked. "On February 26, the ownershipu00a0 status of my community displayed my name. But on February 27, the ownership status showed 'none'. My profile had been deleted too. By the same afternoon, the ownership status displayed Orkut Guy's name. Though none of the 10,500 users in my community were affected, I no longer had any control over it. We share knowledge on the community and suddenly all the information was jeopardised," said Tyagi.

Among the other famous conquests of the Orkut Guy were the Shahrukh Khan Fan Club and John Cena. Even cyber crime experts are flooded with Orkut community hijacking cases. "For the last 10 days I have received many complaints from across India about community hijacking on Orkut," said cyber security exert Sunny Vaghela.

Today, even after more than a week of his reign of terror, legends about the Orkut Guy are making swift rounds of chat rooms and community owners are scared that this online pirate could strike again.

So, who was he? No one is sure but security experts believe he was a smart hacker who had stolen Orkut's administrative rights to target these communities.

Though the Orkut Guy's profile has been deleted from the site, victims say when he was active, his profile resembled that of an Orkut administrator's or moderator's with the "medal" that is awarded by the website officially to employees or trusted users. Suspiciously, Orkut Guy had only one friend on his site, Vandini Ravindran, who claims to be a "Google employee."

"The fact that this guy may have compromised Orkut's internal security, and seems to have stolen Google's administrative powers to delete forums (and profiles) at random is frightening. This could be the beginning of a bigger cyber crime ring," said Tyagi.

Hacking has always been an Achilles' heel for Orkut. Initially, Orkut profiles were hacked very often. This rampant hacking also led to the Orkut cyber war between India and Pakistan last year when cross-border hackers took control of religious communities and started abusing them. However, the Orkut Guy scare seems to have affected portal members the most. Many are angry that their information could fall into wrong hands easily. They are not happy with the redistribution of community ownerships either.

u00a0"The Orkut Guy reasoned that unsafe communities were being taken over. But my community didn't violate any terms of service of the website. The moderator's accounts were safe, including co-owner accounts, so there was no question of any crisis in the community. Hijacking and then random redistribution of communities through an automated system discourage members as they do not feel safe to discuss issues," said Tyagi.

While Google did not respond to our repeated queries, Vandini, who claims in her Orkut profile to be a Google employee, offered an explanation on its behalf. "Google's automated system detects communities that have been taken over in a fraudulent manner and takes corrective actions by selecting eligible new owners. Orkut Guy has sent ownership requests to such system-detected eligible owners and a few of them have already been transferred to such trustworthy members. There are other communities that are in the process of ownership transfers to eligible members," she said.

But Orkut users are questioning this explanation too. "I join a community because I like its essence, its motto and the way it's moderated. All these factors are influenced by the owner of the community. If the ownership changes I may not be interested in the community any longer. Orkut should be careful," said Anupriya Singh, an avid Orkut user. Experts agree. "Orkut should take stringent steps to ensure this never happens again," said Vaghela.