Hey all,

Background information (only read if interested): My hometown (tiny little place called Archdale, represent) is trying to get a YMCA built. They have it all started and everything, but the economy has caused a lot of problems. Kellogg's does a voting competition where they give money to help projects like this to the city with the most votes.

important stuff: I want to write a script that continuously votes on the website for my hometown so they can get the kellogg's money and build the YMCA. I need some help, I have no idea how to go about doing something like this. The biggest problem (I think) is that you have to do one of those "Enter the character phrase above" to make sure you aren't a bot kind of thing. I bet a weak OCR could handle it though, the screen isn't grainy at all. Here is the website:

http://www.frostedflakes.com/#/plant-a-seed/

My hometown zip code is 27263 and the field I am trying to support is in Archdale. I would be very grateful if you'd get on and vote for the archdale field (a couple times, if you're up for it) or help me by pointing me in the direction to get some scripts running that will do this for me.

Thanks wolf web for helping me out.

3/11/2009 3:03:58 PM

it isn't going to let you vote 1000 times from the same IP. your best bet is getting everybody on here to vote in the direction you want.

3/11/2009 3:05:36 PM

I've voted 12 times or so from my computer just now out of boredom. If possible I'll vote up to the max allowed times and then send the script to everyone and let them do it, too.

I will ask TWW crew to help out, too. Good idea.

So, any programming help out there?

3/11/2009 3:07:30 PM

well i mean, if they aren't checking/recording IP's then they're idiots and deserve to be taken advantage of.

evan, write this person a script

3/11/2009 3:10:15 PM

Quote :

"well i mean, if they aren't checking/recording IP's then they're idiots and deserve to be taken advantage of."

lucky for you, this is my opinion as well

and this seems to be for a good cause

i'll whip something up tonight after work.

3/11/2009 3:24:58 PM

THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT BITCH

3/11/2009 4:40:51 PM

gmta








(gay minds think alike)

3/11/2009 4:41:33 PM

I really do appreciate that. Thanks guys.

3/11/2009 5:19:04 PM

you don't even need a script, just use brutus

[Edited on March 11, 2009 at 6:04 PM. Reason : actually, there's a nasty flash/javascript/asp captcha]

3/11/2009 6:00:05 PM

3/11/2009 7:02:18 PM

ha

SUCH SECURITY!!1!

3/12/2009 7:42:44 AM

lol@shenanigans

[Edited on March 12, 2009 at 7:48 AM. Reason : .]

3/12/2009 7:48:35 AM

How do I do these things that you speak of?

3/12/2009 5:28:45 PM

Did evan fail to follow through, again?

3/12/2009 6:03:37 PM

nah

the captcha is strange, still working on it... this is the hardest one i've done so far... everything is ajax and flash, and they weren't stupid about implementing the captcha... aka someone did their homework.

why you being mean to me?

3/12/2009 6:08:28 PM

I just busting your balls, b

wait, not literally

[no homo]

3/12/2009 6:36:07 PM

ScHpEnXeL likes to have sex with men

3/12/2009 6:56:10 PM

more like i like to have sex with your wife

OH SICK BURN

i kid i kid

3/12/2009 7:19:43 PM

evan, I can help you with the captcha killer

3/12/2009 7:32:05 PM

what u got?

i was just going to use the decaptcher.com api

3/12/2009 7:35:29 PM

I'll see if I can find the one I liked.

You just need to find yourself a good open-source OCR utility. Sprinkle in a little PHP GD/imagemagik functionality (to clean the image of speckles, and halftone screen it), and it's an easy system. The little one I wrote back in the day had about 95% accuracy.

3/12/2009 9:27:15 PM

I really appreciate your help, thanks again!

PS - Is there a good website or something that talks about the secrets to doing this sort of thing? I am a computer scientist here at NC State and (maybe to the detriment of the department's credit) I have no idea how to even start going about building something like this. I'd like to learn! Any suggestions on where I should start reading?

Thanks again again

3/12/2009 9:44:40 PM

Not much secret about it.

Get a proxy/scraper like Snoopy (php browser proxy)
Write a few dozen lines of PHP + regular expression matching to handle automating the voting and getting the captcha image.
Pass the image resource to a graphic library and sanitize it
Pass the clean image to an OCR utility
send the OCR output back to the browser proxy, and submit the form.

Repeat a thousand times a minute.

3/12/2009 9:57:30 PM

Quote :

"to the detriment of the department's credit"

that isn't as bad as the girl i knew with a CPE degree that have never heard of SQL. She graduated with a 3.6 GPA.

3/12/2009 9:58:29 PM

Quote :

"Get a proxy/scraper like Snoopy"

i prefer libcurl. Snoopy was WAY underdeveloped last time i looked at it. though that was like 5 years ago so it's probably much improved now

[Edited on March 12, 2009 at 10:25 PM. Reason : though there's nothing i haven't been able to do with libcurl so that says something too]

3/12/2009 10:24:48 PM

yeah, i pretty much only use curl nowadays

3/12/2009 11:25:34 PM

^^keep in mind, I haven't really used PHP for anything real in 5+ years. Libcurl was a very new thing back then, so it's very likely a much better way to go now.

3/12/2009 11:48:35 PM

Quote :

"that isn't as bad as the girl i knew with a CPE degree that have never heard of SQL. She graduated with a 3.6 GPA."

does said CPE have a job right now?

3/13/2009 1:59:25 AM

you IT guys think that your world of SQL and IP addresses is the end-all be-all of technology, but I bet I could list some shit you wouldn't have heard of and act shocked as all hell that you didn't know what I was talking about.


Also, the activities in this thread are FRAUD. If not legally, then surely ethically.

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 7:30 AM. Reason : s]

3/13/2009 7:29:04 AM

Quote :

"does said CPE have a job right now? "

yup.

Quote :

"you IT guys think that your world of SQL and IP addresses is the end-all be-all of technology, but I bet I could list some shit you wouldn't have heard of and act shocked as all hell that you didn't know what I was talking about. "

i'm sure you could. but the fact still remains that a f'in CPE graduate with a near perfect GPA who has never even heard of SQL is a bit strange.

3/13/2009 7:48:43 AM

Quote :

"Also, the activities in this thread are FRAUD. If not legally, then surely ethically."

legally, probably...find someone who cares, though (i guess you could email kellogg's a link to this thread so they'd disqualify archdale, but that'd be pretty low, i think)...ethics, however, are completely subjective so that's a pointless argument

i suppose that one could say that he cares so much about his hometown that he's willing to plead for aid from those around him...gotta give him props for ingenuity that the other contestants might not have

you know, now that i think about it, it might not even legally be fraud...it depends what their terms are...if it says each person can only vote once, that's cool because he's not actually voting himself...if it says only one email address per submission or something, that's also cool...it really depends on how well their legal department did their homework...you'd think a big company like kellogg's would have their terms be bulletproof, but i think you'd be surprised how easy the loopholes are to find

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 8:05 AM. Reason : now that i think about it...]

3/13/2009 8:02:49 AM

Heh. This is easy, make a mouse macro to click like crazy.

With the page open to the Archdale field, click "See more info", then "Support this field", then right click in the white space around the captcha and (in Firefox, at least) select "This Frame -> Open this Frame in New Tab". Make sure you keep the main site open and exactly as you left it. Due to the beauty of their programming skill with Javascript, you can type in the captcha once on the New Tab and just devastate that Submit button with mouse clicks. Because every time you click it sends submissions without reloading your captcha tab. I went crazy and clicked it like 100 times to test it.

No need to break the captcha, although that's a fun method too

Done.


Note: the count hasn't updated on the actual page for the field itself, but it shows a change in the search listing

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 8:59 AM. Reason : .]

3/13/2009 8:56:58 AM

Btw did a quick run through the search results in IL, there are two fields with ~25k and ~50k "supporters". I didn't bother looking for others, but I'm sure there are.

Edit: I bothered, there's ~200k "supporters" in Delmar, NY, haha.

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 9:15 AM. Reason : .]

3/13/2009 9:12:18 AM

Do you know a particular macro recording program I should use that won't come with viruses?

3/13/2009 10:51:33 AM

Get "Live HTTP Headers" firefox plugin. when you get to the vote page, click Tools > Live HTTP Headers. Type in the captcha and press submit. The url "http://www.frostedflakes.com/SupportField.aspx?fieldID=75529" will pop up in the Live HTTP Headers window followed by the reast of the HTTP request and the cookies. Click it, click "Replay".

When the Live HTTP Replay window comes up, click the "Replay" button. Press and hold the enter key. It will repeatedly send requests as you do.

I voted 700 times and it seemed to work.

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 11:23 AM. Reason : ]

3/13/2009 11:21:04 AM

wow, i just looked at it 5 min. ago = 696 supporters
now = 1200+ supporters

3/13/2009 11:23:19 AM

That was me

3/13/2009 11:24:09 AM

2500 votes!

3/13/2009 11:28:03 AM

I used to use this mouse clicker to play wow for me
http://www.geocities.com/mangokun/automouseclicker/automouseclicker.htm
you can write your own in autoit

3/13/2009 11:52:21 AM

5172. hahaha

3/13/2009 11:56:31 AM

Quote :

"you IT guys think that your world of SQL and IP addresses is the end-all be-all of technology, but I bet I could list some shit you wouldn't have heard of and act shocked as all hell that you didn't know what I was talking about."

LOLOLOLOL you have got to be the biggest troll on tww these days

3/13/2009 11:58:03 AM

Don't vote too fast!!!

If you vote too fast apparently it just sends back an internal server error and doesn't count the vote. I left it voting while i was out at lunch and it only counted a few thousand out of 25000.

3/13/2009 1:02:58 PM

it's still well over 10k

3/13/2009 1:05:42 PM

is anyone else voting or just me?

3/13/2009 1:08:03 PM

me too . The click macro idea is working great.

Any idea what the sleep should be between clicks? 1 second?

Thanks guys!

3/13/2009 1:09:22 PM

I tried 0.2s but that's too fast. I'm using 0.333 seconds now and it seems to be working ok. Really you just need to wait until after the server responds before sendig the next request, so it depends on your connection latency.

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 1:13 PM. Reason : ]

3/13/2009 1:10:49 PM

For anyone else who is interested, I found a neat macro logger here:

http://www.autohotkey.com/

Just install the first one and then go to somewhere and open a text file, name it [something].ahk and put the following inside:

#MaxThreadsPerHotkey 3
^p:: ; ctrl+p hotkey (change this hotkey to suit your preferences).
#MaxThreadsPerHotkey 1
if KeepWinZRunning ; This means an underlying thread is already running the loop below.
{
KeepWinZRunning := false ; Signal that thread's loop to stop.
return ; End this thread so that the one underneath will resume and see the change made by the line above.
}
; Otherwise:
KeepWinZRunning := true
Loop
{
; The next four lines are the action you want to repeat (update them to suit your preferences):
WinWait, Support Field - Mozilla Firefox,
IfWinNotActive, Support Field - Mozilla Firefox, , WinActivate, Support Field - Mozilla Firefox,
WinWaitActive, Support Field - Mozilla Firefox,
MouseClick, left, 417, 357
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 417, 357
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 418, 356
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 418, 356
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 418, 356
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 405, 355
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 405, 355
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 403, 355
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 403, 355
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 403, 355
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 403, 355
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 403, 355
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 403, 355
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 403, 355
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 403, 355
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 403, 355
sleep 100
MouseClick, left, 403, 355
sleep 100
; But leave the rest below unchanged.
if not KeepWinZRunning ; The user signaled the loop to stop by pressing Win-Z again.
break ; Break out of this loop.
}
KeepWinZRunning := false ; Reset in preparation for the next press of this hotkey.
return



My screen is 19" so the click coordinates may not be the same on your computer, just go to the folder where you downloaded the macro program and run the "window spy" and get the coordinates on your computer.



Then follow gs7's instructions above

Quote :

"With the page open to the Archdale field, click "See more info", then "Support this field", then right click in the white space around the captcha and (in Firefox, at least) select "This Frame -> Open this Frame in New Tab". Make sure you keep the main site open and exactly as you left it. Due to the beauty of their programming skill with Javascript, you can type in the captcha once on the New Tab and just devastate that Submit button with mouse clicks. Because every time you click it sends submissions without reloading your captcha tab. I went crazy and clicked it like 100 times to test it."

With the tab open on your screen just double click the .ahk file to run the script. CTRL+p pauses. Tweak the sleeps if you want for better performance.

Thanks again all of you who are participating!


PS- If you get your script done Evan, send it out! I'd like to be able to vote AND do other stuff, something you can't do with this solution. And thanks again for your help

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 1:44 PM. Reason : .]

3/13/2009 1:39:51 PM

SUPPORTERS 15178

3/13/2009 1:40:33 PM

I think the leader is at 300 or 400k. Let's keep it up!

3/13/2009 1:44:48 PM

there's like 48 days left

3/13/2009 1:54:54 PM