PageRank Checksum hacked again

[astrab]

PageRank Checksum hacked again

http://google-blog.dirson.com/post.new/0155/

Tool:
http://google.dirson.com/pagerank_checksum_form.php

[SEbasic]

Man, those guys are good.

[MindCrime]

And I'm to stupid to understand what to do with that checksum....
Anybody care to share some info about what to do with it?

[giorgioarmani]

What does this mean?

[MindCrime]

Man, am I happy to see I'm not the only one wondering....

[SEbasic]

It is a script that basically enables you to request the PR for a website, away from the google toolbar.

You can see the old version of the script in use here - I'm not too sure if it still works 100%, but it will give you an idea of what the basic concepts behind the script are.

[digitalpoint]

The old checksum still works, but I image they are going to disable it once enough of the Google toolbars are updated with the new one.

But I agree... those guys that hacked it (again) are pretty damn good.

[Help Desk]

I didn't even know the old one was going to get phased out. I bet this is why there hasn't been a PR update in so long.

[SEbasic]

I was thinking that earlier - Maybe they are waiting for the TB to update, like shawn said.

I imagine it would take a while for all of them to get the new checksum.

But even then, why would they wait 3 months (Other than the quarterly update thing that GG mentioned).

[digitalpoint]

I don't think there is a correlation between the lack of a recent PageRank update and the new checksum.

[bobmutch]

ThinkBling: I considered that also, but Google is not completely stupit I think they know how quickly it would be hacked again.
But if that was the reason this is bad news for the toolbar. This means back to the drawing board for Google to make a unhackable page rank checksum. If this is the case this means there could be further delays on the toolbar update which is a bad thing for the watchers of green.
Personally I don't think that is the issue, at least I hope not. I think they have just gone to quarterly updates like GoogleGuy seemed to suggest a number of months ago. (Well I heard that havn't read it yet.)

[digitalpoint]

Nothing is uncrackable if someone wants to do it bad enough. Google's checksum algorithm is already pretty complex, and it's crackable (obviously).

[gemini]

And I'm to stupid to understand what to do with that checksum....
Anybody care to share some info about what to do with it?

you can do whatever you want - check PR for your/other pages (backlinks), check when the pages were indexed last time, you can store the data in a database ... track the info... do reports... if you need it.

[nohaber]

Every software is crackable. The toolbar executes code on your computer. I don't think it's a big deal to crack the way it communicates data with the data centers.
Cracking is a very specific skill that very few people have, and fortunately its illegal and no one pays for it.
In the good ol' days of M$-DOS, cracking was harder and much more fun.

[Owlcroft]

Originally Posted by SEbasic

Man, those guys are good.

I don't normally correct language errors in posts, but that mis-spelling of "stupid" is too severe to let go without comment.

If these idle minds need something to engage their great and powerful little selves, why not do the Times of London Sunday crossword? Or find a cure for cancer, or for George Bush? What does cracking the checksum accomplish? It seriously screws up large numbers of innocent third parties to no benefit or gain whatsoever by anybody.The brain-damaged from the "free software" cellar at least have some rationale, however goofy and spurious, because they want to make use of, or allow others to make use of, a pricey piece of something. But this is nothing save sheer hebephrenia.

[Michael]

   ...why not do the Times of London Sunday crossword?

Maybe because strictly speaking there isn't one but they could join the The Times Crossword Club

More likely it's simply because complex verbal reasoning is not normally associated with superior numerical reasoning. I understand your sentiment though...

- Michael